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PASSAGES FROM THE PHILOSOPHY 
OF HERBERT SPENCER 



75° co pi- es °f this book have been 
printed on Van Gelder hand-made 
paper and the type distributed. 



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PASSAGES FROM THE PHILOSOPHY 
OF HERBERT SPENCER CHOSEN 
BY CLARA SHERWOOD STEVENS 




PRINTED FOR THOMAS B MOSHER AND 
PUBLISHED BY HIM AT XLV EXCHANGE 
STREET PORTLAND MAINE MDCCCCX 



3^ 5 



COPYRIGHT 

CLARA SHERWOOD STEVENS 

I9IO 



©CI. A 271 I 



CONTENTS 



PREFACE . 

I FIRST PRINCIPLES 

II PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY 

III PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

IV PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY . 
V PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS 

VI MISCELLANEOUS WORKS 



PAGE 

xi 
3 

29 

39 
45 
59 
79 



PREFACE 



The writer is indebted to the courtesy of Messrs. 
D. Appleton & Company for permission to publish 
these passages and it is to their excellent new 
edition of Herbert Spencer's complete works that 
the page citations refer. 

c. s. s. 





PREFACE 

HE energies of our system will decay , 
the glory of the sun will be dimmed, 
and the earth, tideless aud inert, will 



no longer tolerate the race which has 
for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go 
down into the -pit, and all his thoughts will perish. 
The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure 
corner has for a brief space broken the contented 
silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter 
will know itself no longer. 6 Imperishable monu- 
ments ' and ' Immortal Deeds ,' death itself, and love 
stronger than death will be as though they had 
never been. JVor will any thing that is be better or 
be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion 
and suffering of man have striven through count- 
less generations to effect" 



PREFACE 



Perhaps to the average reader these lines from 
The Foundations of Belief , by Arthur James Bal- 
four, would seem to characterize the doctrine 
of Herbert Spencer. But the real student of his 
Philosophy would resent the injustice of such an in- 
terpretation. As though from a glance at a figure 
upon the border of an intricate piece of tapestry, 
one could conceive the design and colour scheme of 
the whole. 

Herbert Spencer could not avoid the conviction 
that there exists no rational foundation for the be- 
lief in the continuance of conscious personality after 
death. He believed that the human intellect in its 
present state of development, could offer no solution 
to the great problem of identity. He neither af- 
firmed nor denied but with unremitting labour and 
his life's devotion he produced a Philosophy which 
gave an inestimable impulse to modern thought if 
not to Science. In his Synthetic Philosophy he 
revealed the mysterious unity of all existence ; — he 
traced the progress of Evolution in life, mind, 
society and morality. 

As one follows the deep probing of his thought 
into the realms of the unseen and the inscrutable 



PREFACE 



one travels beyond the personal — the here and the 
now — and thinks in terms of the Universe. For a 
time, at least, the sense of self fades into insignifi- 
cance. The wistful wonder as to what, in all this 
development, is to become of us, is for a little while 
forgotten. All attempt to assert what we are in the 
innermost recesses of our being seems futile arro- 
gance, and we stand humbly with bared heads, in 
the Presence — the Omnipresence of the Great 
Unknown. 

Far from being against Religion his desire was 
rather to strengthen Religion by bringing it into 
harmony with Science. He says of established 
forms of religion, " During each stage of progress 
men must think in such terms of thought as they 
possess." And again he realizes the necessity of 
the belief in future rewards and punishments to 
the great mass of men who are not yet capable of 
tracing "the good and bad consequences which 
conduct brings round through the established 
order of things." But Evolution — Progress, was 
his cry. 

" All parts away for the progress of souls, " 
Walt Whitman sang as though he had listened and 



PREFACE 



caught the key from the vibrating bass notes of 
Spencer's thought. 

"All religion, all solid things, art, governments — all that 
was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, 
falls into niches and corners before the procession 
of souls along the grand roads of the universe. 

They go ! they go ! I know that they go, but I know not 
where they go, 

But I know that they go toward the best — toward some- 
thing great." 

But Spencer had not Whitman's poetic vision of 
immortality — of a -personal existence forever and 
forever. — Still one has only to read his " Ultimate 
Questions " (which is given almost in full at the 
end of this volume) to discover that in the twilight 
of his long life of intellectual labour, he too was 
confronted by the great Riddle — that he too had his 
longings for something — afterwards — for which 
he could find no evidence — and that at last he was 
obliged to content himself with his masterful 
thought about Space — " that universal matrix 
itself anteceding alike creation and evolution." 



PREFACE 



" Theist and Agnostic must agree in recogniz- 
ing the properties of Space as inherent — eternal — 
uncreated — as anteceding all creation if creation 
has taken place and all evolution if evolution has 
taken place." And his closing words echo with 
loneliness and pathos, "Of late years the con- 
sciousness that without origin or cause Infinite 
Space has ever existed and must ever exist, pro- 
duces in me a feeling from which I shrink." 

The eighteen volumes of Herbert Spencer present 
such a formidable mass to the average reader that 
there would seem to be some reason for a little 
book of selections from his mighty work. An out- 
line of his chain of thought, to give, as it were, a 
bird's-eye view of his Synthetic Philosophy by plac- 
ing in orderly succession the statements that spring 
most forcibly from his pages. 

As the task of selection went on it became more 
and more apparent to what an extraordinary 
extent modern thought is influenced if not moulded 
by his philosophy. 

Our generation is so quick to seize a new thought 
that we often forget to whom we are indebted for 
it. Our system of telegraph and cable has given 



PREFACE 



a kind of consciousness to the world — a conscious- 
ness which eagerly absorbs every new fragment of 
the knowledge acquired with so much patience 
and self-denial by the discoverer. Our world 
absorbs and gives out again until the thought so 
timidly advanced but a few years ago becomes as 
a household word whilst the name of the thinker is 
all but forgotten. The axioms of to-morrow were 
yesterday but dreams. The thought of the indi- 
vidual becomes the thought of the world. 

Though it is unlikely that the name of Herbert 
Spencer will ever be forgotten, one can but 
doubt whether, in these overloaded days, many 
have the time and the eyes, even if they have the 
desire, to read enough of his philosophy to under- 
stand and appreciate him. And from such a 
doubt grew the determination to offer these pas- 
sages both to those who do not know, and to those 
who do know and reverence the work of this most 
profound thinker of modern times. 

CLARA SHERWOOD STEVENS. 




I 

FIRST PRINCIPLES 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



Of all antagonisms of belief the oldest, the widest, the 
most profound, and the most important, is that between 
Religion and Science, (p. 9.) 

The universality of religious ideas, their independent 
evolution among different primitive races, and their great 
vitality, unite in showing that their source must be deep- 
seated. In other words, we are obliged to admit that if 
not supernaturally derived as the majority contend, they 
must be derived out of human experiences, slowly accu- 
mulated and organized, (p. 11.) 

If the religious sentiment, displayed constantly by the 
majority of mankind, and occasionally aroused even in 
those seemingly devoid of it, must be classed among 
human emotions, we cannot rationally ignore it. Here 
is an attribute which has played a conspicuous part 
throughout the entire past as far back as history records, 
and is at present the life of numerous institutions, the 
stimulus to perpetual controversies, and the prompter of 
countless daily actions. Evidently as a question in phi- 
losophy, we are called on to say what this attribute means ; 
and we cannot decline the task without confessing our 
philosophy to be incompetent, (pp. n, 12.) 

Positive knowledge does not, and never can, fill the 
whole region of possible thought. At the uttermost reach 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



5 



of discovery there arises, and must ever arise, the ques- 
tion — What lies beyond ? (p. 13.) 

Throughout all future time, as now, the human mind 
may occupy itself, not only with ascertained phenomena 
and their relations, but also with that unascertained 
something which phenomena and their relations imply. 
Hence if knowledge cannot monopolize consciousness — 
if it must always continue possible for the mind to dwell 
upon that which transcends knowledge, then there can 
never cease to be a place for something of the nature of 
Religion ; since Religion under all its forms is distin- 
guished from everything else in this, that its subject 
matter passes the sphere of the intellect, (p. 13.) 

Science is simply a higher development of common 
knowledge ; and if Science is repudiated, all knowledge 
must be repudiated along with it. (p. 14.) 



Nowhere is it possible to draw a line and say 
Science begins, (p. 15.) 



here 



Religion, everywhere present as a warp running through 
the weft of human history, expresses some eternal fact ; 
while Science is an organized body of truths, ever grow- 
ing, and ever being purified from errors. And if both 
have bases in the reality of things, then between them 
there must be a fundamental harmony, (p. 16.) 



FIRST 
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PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 






FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



We have to discover some fundamental verity which 
Religion will assert, with all possible emphasis, in the 
absence of Science ; and which Science, with all possible 
emphasis, will assert in the absence of Religion. We 
must look for a conception which combines the conclu- 
sions of both — must see how Science and Religion 
express opposite sides of the same fact : the one its near 
or visible side, and the other its remote or invisible side. 
(P- 1 7-) 

When we inquire what is the meaning of the effects 
produced on our senses — when we ask how there come 
to be in our consciousness impressions of sounds, of 
colours, of tastes, and of those various attributes we 
ascribe to bodies, we are compelled to regard them as the 
effects of some cause, (p. 30.) 

We are obliged not only to suppose some cause, but 
also a first cause. The matter, or spirit, or other agent 
producing these impressions on us, must either be the 
first cause of them or not. If it is the first cause the 
conclusion is reached. If it is not the first cause, then 
by implication there must be a cause behind it, which 
thus becomes the real cause of the effect, (p. 31.) 

If beyond that finite region over which the First Cause 
extends, there lies a region, which we are compelled to 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



regard as infinite, over which it does not extend — if we 
admit that there is an infinite uncaused surrounding the 
finite caused ; we tacitly abandon the hypothesis of causa- 
tion altogether. Thus it is impossible to consider the 
First Cause as finite. But if it cannot be finite it must be 
infinite, (p. 31.) 

Religions diametrically opposed in their overt dogmas, 
are perfectly at one in the tacit conviction that the exist- 
ence of the world with all it contains and all which sur- 
rounds it, is a mystery calling for interpretation, (p. 37.) 

Alike in the external and the internal worlds, the man 
of science sees himself in the midst of perpetual changes 
of which he can discover neither the beginning nor the 
end. If he allows himself to entertain the hypothesis that 
the Universe originally existed in a diffused form, he 
finds it impossible to conceive how this came to be so ; 
and equally, if he speculates on the future, he can assign 
no limit to the grand succession of phenomena ever 
unfolding themselves before him. In like manner if he 
looks inward he perceives that both ends of the thread of 

consciousness are beyond his grasp Objective and 

subjective things he thus ascertains to be alike inscrutable 
in their substance and genesis. In all directions his in- 
vestigations eventually bring him (face to face with an 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



insoluble enigma He learns at once the greatness 

and the littleness of the human intellect — its power in 
dealing with all that comes within the range of experience, 
its impotence in dealing with all that transcends experi- 
ence. He, more than any other, truly knows that in its 
ultimate nature nothing can be known, (pp. 55, 56.) 

Ultimate religious ideas and ultimate scientific ideas, 
alike turn out to be merely symbols of the actual, not 
cognitions of it. (p. 57.) 

A thought involves relation, difference, likeness. What- 
ever does not present each of these does not admit of 
cognition, (p. 68.) 

Passing over its noumenal nature of which we know 
nothing, Life is definable as the continuous adjustment of 
internal relations to external relations, (p. 70.) 

What we call truth, guiding us to successful action and 
consequent maintenance of life, is simply the accurate 
correspondence of subjective to objective relations ; while 
error, leading to failure and therefore towards death, is the 
absence of such accurate correspondence, (pp. 71, 72.) 

Deep down then in the very nature of Life, the relativity 
of our knowledge is discernible. The analysis of vital 
actions in general, leads not only to the conclusion that 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



things in themselves cannot be known to us, but also to i 
the conclusion that knowledge of them, were it possible, i 
would be useless, (p. 73.) 

Besides that definite consciousness of which Logic 
formulates the laws, there is also an indefinite conscious- 
ness which cannot be formulated. Besides complete 
thoughts .... there are thoughts which it is impossible 
to complete, and yet which are still real, in the sense that 
they are normal affections of the intellect, (p. 74.) 

To say that we cannot know the Absolute, is, by impli- 
cation, to affirm that there is an Absolute. In the very 
denial of our power to learn what the Absolute is, there 
lies hidden the assumption that it is. (p. 74.) 

It is impossible to conceive that our knowledge is a 
knowledge of Appearances only, without at the same 
time assuming a Reality of which they are appearances ; 
for appearance without reality is unthinkable, (p. 74.) 

One of the arguments used to prove the relativity of 
our knowledge, is, that we cannot conceive Space or Time 
as either limited or unlimited, (p. 79.) 

In the very assertion that all knowledge, properly so 
called, is Relative, there is involved the assertion that 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



there exists a Non-relative. In each step of the argument 
by which this doctrine is established, the same assump- 
tion is made. From the necessity of thinking in relations, 
it follows that the Relative is itself inconceivable, except 
as related to a real Non-relative. Unless a real Non- 
relative or Absolute be postulated, the Relative itself 
becomes absolute, and so brings the argument to a con- 
tradiction. And on watching our thoughts we have seen 
how impossible it is to get rid of the consciousness of an 
Actuality lying behind Appearances ; and how, from this 
impossibility, results our indestructible belief in that 
Actuality, (pp. 82, 83.) 

Here, then, is that basis of agreement we set out to 
seek. This conclusion which objective science illustrates 
and subjective science shows to be unavoidable, — this 
conclusion which brings the results of speculation into 
harmony with those of common sense ; is also the conclu- 
sion which reconciles Religion with Science. Common 
Sense asserts the existence of a reality ; Objective Sci- 
ence proves that this reality cannot be what we think it ; 
Subjective Science shows why we cannot think of it as it 
is, and yet are compelled to think of it as existing ; and 
in this assertion of a Reality utterly inscrutable in nature, 
Religion finds an assertion essentially coinciding with her 
own. (p. 84.) 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



This consciousness of an Incomprehensible Power, 
called Omnipresent from inability to assign its limits, is 
just that consciousness on which Religion dwells, (p. 85.) 

How truly its central position is impregnable, Religion 
has never adequately realized. In the devoutest faith as 
we commonly see it, there lies hidden a core of scepti- 
cism ; and it is this scepticism which causes that dread 
of inquiry shown by Religion when face to face with 
Science. Obliged to abandon one by one the supersti- 
tions it once tenaciously held, and daily finding other 
cherished beliefs more, and more shaken, Religion secretly 
fears that all things may some day be explained ; and 
thus itself betrays a lurking doubt whether that Incom- 
prehensible Cause of which it is conscious, is really 
incomprehensible, (pp. 86, 87.) 

Of Religion then, we must always remember, that amid 
its many errors and corruptions it has asserted and 
diffused a supreme verity. From the first, the recognition 
of this supreme verity, in however imperfect a manner, 
has been its vital element, (p. 87.) 

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the 
pious, (p. 94.) 

Meanwhile let us recognize whatever of permanent 
good there is in these persistent attempts to frame con- 



FIRST 
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PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



ceptions of that which cannot be conceived. From the 
beginning it has been only through the successive failures 
of such conceptions to satisfy the mind, that higher and 
higher ones have been gradually reached ; and doubtless, 
the conceptions now current are indispensable as transi- 
tional modes of thought. . . It is possible, nay probable, 
that under their most abstract forms, ideas of this order 
will always continue to occupy the background of our con- 
sciousness. Very likely there will ever remain a need to 
give shape to that indefinite sense of an Ultimate Exist- 
ence, which forms the basis of our intelligence, (pp. 96, 97.) 

Perpetually to construct ideas requiring the utmost 
stretch of our faculties, and perpetually to find that such 
ideas must be abandoned as futile imaginations, may 
realize to us more fully than any other course, the great- 
ness of that which we vainly strive to grasp, (p. 97.) 

Doubtless, in all times and places, it has consoled the 
barbarian to think of his deities as so like himself in nature, 
that they might be bribed by offerings of food ; and the 
assurance that deities could not be so propitiated must 
have been repugnant, because it deprived him of an easy 
method of gaining supernatural protection, (p. 98.) 

No mental revolution can be accomplished without 
more or less laceration, (p. 98.) 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 






Speaking generally, the religion current in each age and 
among each people, has been as near an approximation 
to the truth as it was then and there possible for men to 
receive, (p. 99.) 

During each stage of progress men must think in such 
terms of thought as they possess, (p. 99.) 

Even now, for the great mass of men, unable to trace 
out with clearness those good and bad consequences 
which conduct brings round through the established order 
of things, it is well that there should be depicted future 
punishments and future joys. (p. 101.) 

To see clearly how a right or wrong act generates con- 
sequences, internal and external, that go on branching 
out more widely as years progress, requires a rare power 
of analysis, (p. 101.) 

Even as it is, those who relinquish the faith in which 
they have been brought up, for this most abstract faith 
in which Science and Religion unite, may not uncom- 
monly fail to act up to their convictions, (pp. 101, 102.) 

Forms of religion, like forms of government, must be 
fit for those who live under them. (p. 102.) 

It is hard to bear the display of that pride of ignorance 
which so far exceeds the pride of science, (p. 103.) 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



H 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the 
highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance of 
the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from 
an impersonal point of view. Let him remember that 
opinion is the agency through which character adapts 
external arrangements to itself, and that his opinion rightly 
forms part of this agency — is a unit of force constituting, 
with other such units, the general power which works out 
social changes ; and he will perceive that he may properly 
give utterance to his innermost conviction : leaving it to 
produce what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he 
has in him these sympathies with some principles and 
repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and 
aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident but a product 
of the time. While he is a descendant of the past he is a 
parent of the future ; and his thoughts are as children 
born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. . . . 
The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter ; know- 
ing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his 
right part in the world — knowing that if he can effect the 
change he aims at — well ; if not — well also ; though not 
so well. (pp. 105, 106.) 

Knowledge of the lowest kind is un-unified knowledge ; 
Science is partially-unified knowledge; Philosophy is 
completely-unified 'knowledge, (p. 119.) 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



■5 



Every thought involves a whole system of thoughts, and 
ceases to exist if severed from its various correlatives, 
(p. 121.) 

We know nothing more of existence than continued 
manifestation, (p. 126.) 

Setting out from the conclusion lately reached, that all 
things known to us are manifestations of the Unknowable ; 
. . we find that the manifestations, considered simply as 
such, are divisible into two great classes, called by some 
impressions and ideas, (pp. 127, 128.) 

All manifestations of the Unknowable are divisible into 
two such classes. . . Obviously it corresponds to the 
division between object and subject. This profoundest 
distinction among manifestations of the Unknowable, we 
recognize by grouping them into self and not-self. . . 
Each order of manifestations carries with it the irresistible 
implication of some power that manifests itself; and by 
the words ego and non-ego respectively, we mean the 
power that manifests itself in the faint forms, and the 
power that manifests itsself in the vivid forms, (pp. 
i37» 138-) 

And lastly, it was shown that though by the relativity of 
our thought we are eternally debarred from knowing or 
conceiving Absolute Being; yet that this very relativity 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



i6 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



of our thought, necessitates that vague consciousness of 
Absolute Being which no mental effort can suppress. 
That relation is the universal form of thought, is thus a 
truth which all kinds of demonstration unite in proving. 

(P- I45-) 

Having seen that matter is indestructible, motion con- 
tinuous, and force persistent — having seen that forces 
perpetually undergo transformations, and that motion, fol- 
lowing the line of least resistance, is always rhythmic, it 
remains to find the formula expressing the combined con- 
sequences of the laws thus separately formulated, (p. 252.) 

The law we seek, therefore, must be the law of the 
conti?iuous redistribution of matter and motion. Absolute 
rest and permanence do not exist. Every object, no less 
than the aggregate of all objects, undergoes from instant 
to instant some alteration of state. Gradually or quickly 
it is receiving motion or losing motion, while some or all 
of its parts are simultaneously changing their relations 
to one another, (p. 252.) 

Our Sidereal System by its general form, by its clusters 
of stars of various degrees of closeness, and by its nebulae 
in all stages of condensation, gives grounds for suspecting 
that, generally and locally, concentration is going on. 
(p. 281.) 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



17 



Evolution, under its primary aspect, is illustrated most 
simply and clearly by this passage of the Solar System 
from a diffused incoherent state to a consolidated coherent 
state, (p. 281.) 

At the same time that Evolution is a change from the 
homogeneous to the heterogeneous, it is a change from 
the indefinite to the definite. Along with an advance from 
simplicity to complexity, there is an advance from con- 
fusion to order — from undetermined arrangement to 
determined arrangement. Development, no matter of 
what kind, exhibits not only a multiplication of unlike 
parts, but an increase in the clearness with which these 
parts are marked off from one another, (p. 334.) 

Proof that all Evolution is from the indefinite to the 
definite, we find not less abundant than proof that all 
Evolution is from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. 
(P- 35°-) 

The more specific idea of Evolution now reached is — 
a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a 
definite coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dis- 
sipation of motion and integration of matter, (p. 351.) 

Here presents itself a final question, which has probably 
been taking shape in the minds of many while reading 
this chapter. " If Evolution of every kind is an increase 



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• i8 



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FIRST 
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in complexity of structure and function that is incidental 
to the universal process of equilibration, and if equilibra- 
tion must end in complete rest, what is the fate towards 
which all things tend ? If the Solar System is slowly 
dissipating its energies — if the Sun is losing his heat at a 
rate which will tell in millions of years — if with decrease 
of the Sun's radiations there must go on a decrease in the 
activity of geologic and meteorologic processes as well 
as in the quantity of vegetal and animal life — if Man 
and Society are similarly dependent on this supply of 
energy which is gradually coming to an end ; are we not 
manifestly progressing towards omnipresent death ? " (p. 

47 1 -) 

That such a state must be the outcome of the changes 
everywhere going on, seems beyond doubt. Whether 
any ulterior process may reverse these processes and 
initiate a new life, is a question to be considered here- 
after. For the present it must suffice that the end of all the 
transformations we have traced, is quiescence, (p. 471.) 

Is that motionless state called death, which ends Evolu- 
tion in organic bodies, typical of the universal death in 
which Evolution at large must end ? And have we thus 
to contemplate as the outcome of things, a boundless 
space holding here and there extinct suns, fated to remain 
for ever without further change, (p. 484.) 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



To so speculative an inquiry, none but a speculative 
answer is to be expected. Such answer as may be 
ventured, must be taken less as a positive answer than as 
a demurrer to the conclusion that the proximate result 
must be the ultimate result. If, pushing to its extreme 
the argument that Evolution must come to a close in com- 
plete equilibrium or rest, the reader suggests that for aught 
which appears to the contrary there must result a Universal 
Death which will continue indefinitely, two replies may be 
made. The first is that the evidence presented in the 
heavens at large implies that while of the multitudinous 
aggregates of matter it presents, most are passing through 
those stages which must end in local rest, there are others 
which, having barely commenced the series of changes 
constituting Evolution, are on the way to become theatres 
of life. The second reply is that when we contemplate 
our Sidereal System as a whole, certain of the great facts 
which science has established imply potential renewals of 
life, now in one region now in another ; followed, possibly, 
at a period unimaginably remote by a more general 
renewal. This conclusion is suggested when we take into 
account a factor not yet mentioned, (pp. 484, 485.) 

For hitherto we have considered only that equilibration 
which is taking place within our Solar System and within 
similar systems: taking no note of that immeasurably 



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greater equilibration which remains to take place : ending 
those motions through space which such systems possess. 
That the stars, in old times called fixed, are all in motion, 
has now become a familiar truth, and that they are mov- 
ing with velocities ranging from say 10 miles per second 
up to some 70 miles per second (which last is the velocity 
of a " runaway star " supposed to be passing through our 
Sidereal System) is a truth deduced from observations 
by modern astronomers. To be joined with this is 
the fact that there are dying stars and probably dead 
stars. . . . The implication appears to be that beyond 
the luminous masses constituting the visible Sidereal 
System, there are non-luminous masses, perhaps fewer in 
number perhaps more numerous, which in common with 
the luminous ones are impelled by mutual gravitation, 
(p. 485O 

Scattered through immensurable space, but more 
especially in and about the region of the Milky Way, 
are numerous star-clusters, varying in their characters 
from those which are hardly distinguishable from un- 
usually rich portions of the heavens, to those which 
constitute condensed swarms of stars .... The vari- 
eties between these extremes were regarded by Sir 
William Herschel as implying progressive concentration, 
(pp. 485, 486.) 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



But accepting, as we must now do, the conclusion 
drawn by Helmholtz . . we are obliged to infer that 
stars moving at the high velocities acquired during con- 
centration, will, by mutual arrest, be dissipated into gases 
of extreme tenuity, constituting what we conceive as 
nebulous matter, (p. 486.) 

If in pursuance of this view we regard (1) the star- 
clusters variously condensed, (2) the diffused and irregular 
nebulae, (3) the spiral and other nebulae that are con- 
centrating into star-systems, as exhibiting different stages 
of the same process, then the implication is that in 
many thousands of places throughout our Sidereal System 
there are going on alternations of Evolution and Dissolu- 
tion. And this conception may be taken as a sufficient 
answer to the inference above drawn that equilibration 
must end in universal death — a speculative demurrer to 
a speculative conclusion, (p. 488.) 

There are considerable difficulties in the way of 
regarding our Sidereal System as a whole, subject to the 
processes of evolution and dissolution, (p. 490.) 

Nevertheless sundry traits seem to imply that through- 
out a past so immense that the time occupied in the evo- 
lution of a solar or stellar system becomes by comparison 
utterly insignificant, there has been a gathering together 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



of the matter of our Universe from a more dispersed 
state ; and its disc-like form, or else annular form, indi- 
cated by the encircling appearance of the Milky Way, 
raises the thought that it has a combined motion within 
which all minor motions are included. Moreover the 
contrast between the galactic circle, with its closely 
packed millions of stars dotted with numerous star- 
clusters, and the regions about the galactic poles, in 
which the more regular nebulae are chiefly congregated, 
yields further evidence that our Sidereal System has some 
kind of unity, and that during an immeasurable past it 
has undergone transformations due to general forces, 
(p. 490.) 

In any case, however, the irregularities of the Milky 
Way necessitate the conclusion that there is going on, 
and must continue to go on, a general change of struc- 
ture, (p 490.) 

Reduced to its abstract form, the argument is that the 
quantity of motion implied by dispersion must be as great 
as the quantity of motion implied by aggregation, or 
rather must be the same motion, taking now the molar 
form and now the molecular form ; and if we allow our- 
selves to conceive this as an ultimate result there arises 
the conception not only of local evolutions and dissolu- 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



2 3 



tions throughout our Sidereal System but of general evo- 
lutions and dissolutions alternating indefinitely, (p. 492.) 

But unable though we must ever remain to give a com- 
plete account of the transformation of things, even in 
any of its minor parts, and still more in its totality, we 
are able to recognize throughout it the same general law ; 
and may reasonably infer that it holds in those parts 
of the transformation which are beyond the reach of our 
intelligence as it does in those parts which are within its 
reach, (p. 493.) 

The concentration of Matter implies the dissipation of 
Motion . . conversely, the absorption of Motion implies 
the diffusion of Matter, (p. 498.) 

Such, in fact, we found to be the law of the entire cycle 
of changes passed through by every existence. Moreover 
we saw that besides applying to the whole history of each 
existence, it applies to each detail of the history. Both 
processes are going on at every instant ; but always there 
is a differential result in favour of the first or the second. 
And every change, even though it be only a transposition 
of parts, inevitably advances the one process or the 
other, (p. 498.) 

We know that while a physically-cohering aggregate like 
the human body is getting larger and taking on its general 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



24 



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FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



shape, each of its organs is doing the same ; that while 
each organ is growing and becoming unlike others, there 
is going on a differentiation and integration of its compo- 
nent tissues and vessels ; and that even the components 
of these components are severally increasing and passing 
into more definitely heterogeneous structures. But we 
have not duly remarked that while each individual is 
developing, the society of which he is an insignificant 
unit is developing too ; that while the aggregate mass 
forming a society is integrating and becoming more 
definitely heterogeneous, so, too, that total aggregate, the 
Earth, is continuing to integrate and differentiate ; that 
while the Earth, which in bulk is not a millionth of the 
Solar System, progresses towards its more concentrated 
structure, the Solar System similarly progresses, (pp. 
501, 502.) 



So understood, Evolution becomes not one in principle 
only, but one in fact. There are not many metamor- 
phoses similarly carried on, but there is a single meta- 
morphosis universally progressing, wherever the reverse 
metamorphosis has not set in. In any locality, great 
or small, where the occupying matter acquires an appre- 
ciable individuality or distinguishableness from other 
matter, there Evolution goes on ; or rather, the acquire- 
ment of this appreciable individuality is the commence- 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



25 



ment of Evolution. And this holds regardless of the size 
of the aggregate, and regardless of its inclusion in other 
aggregates, (p. 502.) 

While inferring that in many parts of the visible uni- 
verse dissolution is following evolution, and that through- 
out these regions evolution will presently recommence, 
the question whether there is an alternation of evolution 
and dissolution in the totality of things is one which 
must be left unanswered as beyond the reach of human 
intelligence, (p. 506.) 

If, however, we lean to the belief that what happens to 
the parts will eventually happen to the whole, we are led 
to entertain the conception of Evolutions that have filled 
an immeasurable past and Evolutions that will fill an 
immeasurable future. We can no longer contemplate the 
visible creation as having a definite beginning or end, or 
as being isolated. It becomes unified with all existence 
before and after ; and the Force which the Universe pre- 
sents, falls into the same category with its Space and 
Time, as admitting of no limitation in thought, (p. 506.) 

Belief in a Power which transcends knowledge is that 
fundamental element in Religion which survives all its 
changes of form. This inexpugnable belief proved to 
be likewise that on which all exact Science is based. . . . 



FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



26 



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FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 



The recognition of a persistent Force, ever changing its 
manifestations but unchanged in quantity throughout all 
past time and all future time, is that which we find alone 
makes possible each concrete interpretation, and at last 
unifies all concrete interpretations, (pp. 506, 507.) 

Matter, Motion, and Force are but symbols of the Un- 
known Reality, (p. 509.) 

The reasonings contained in the foregoing pages, afford 
no support to either of the antagonist hypotheses respect- 
ing the ultimate nature of things. . . . Their implications 
are no more materialistic than they are spiritualistic ; and 
no more spiritualistic than they are materialistic. The 
establishment of correlation and equivalence between the 
forces of the outer and the inner worlds, serves to assimilate 
either to the other, according as we set out with one or 
the other. But he who rightly interprets the doctrine 
contained in this work, will see that neither of them can 
be taken as ultimate. He will see that though the rela- 
tion of subject and object renders necessary to us these 
antithetical conceptions of Spirit and Matter ; the one is 
no less than the other to be regarded as but a sign of 
the Unknown Reality which underlies both. (p. 510.) 



II 

PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY 





II 

PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY 

TRUE idea of Life must be an idea of some 
kind of change or changes. (Vol. I, p. 82.) 

Perhaps the widest and most familiar 
induction of Biology, is that organisms grow. (Vol. I, 

P- "350 

The general truth that extra function is followed by 
extra growth, must be supplemented by the equally general 
truth, that beyond a limit, usually soon reached, very little, 
if any, further modification can be produced. (Vol. I, 
pp. 230, 231.) 

Nor is this truth less clearly illustrated among the more 
complex mental powers. A man may have a mathemati- 
cal faculty, a poetical faculty, or an oratorical faculty, 
which special education improves to a certain extent. 
But unless he is unusually endowed in one of those direc- 
tions, no amount of education will make him a first-rate 



PRINCIPLES 
OF BIOLOGY 



3° 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



PRINCIPLES 
OF BIOLOGY 



mathematician, a first-rate poet, or a first-rate orator. 
Thus the general fact appears to be that while in each 
individual certain changes in the proportions of parts may 
be caused by variations of functions, the congenital 
structure of each individual puts a limit to the modifia- 
bility of every part. (Vol. I, p. 231.) 

A young organism arising by internal or external gem- 
mation from a parent organism, passes gradually from a 
state in which it is an indistinguishable part of the parent 
organism to a state in which it is a separate organism of 
like structure with the parent. At what stage does it 
become an individual ? (Vol. I, pp. 249, 250.) 

We must be content with a course which commits us to 
the smallest number of incongruities ; and this course is, 
to consider as an individual any organized mass which is 
capable of independently carrying on that continuous 
adjustment of inner to outer relations which constitutes 
Life. (Vol.1, p. 251.) 

The rise of distinct sexes was doubtless a step in evo- 
lution, and before it took place the formation of new 
individuals could have arisen only by division of the old, 
either into two or into many. (Vol. I, p. 270.) 

Many problems beyond those which embryology pre- 
sents have to be solved; and no solution is furnished. 
(Vol. I, p. 371.) 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



3i 



At last then we are obliged to admit that the actual 
organizing process transcends conception. It is not 
enough to say that we cannot know it ; we must say that 
we cannot even conceive it. (Vol. I, p. 373.) 

There is an ensemble of vital phenomena presented by 
each organism in the course of its growth, development, 
and decay; and there is an ensemble of vital phenomena 
presented by the organic world as a whole. Neither of 
these can be properly dealt with apart from the other. 
.... What interpretation we put on the facts of struc- 
ture and function in each living body, depends entirely 
on our conception of the mode in which living bodies in 
general have originated. (Vol. I, p. 415.) 

We have to choose between two hypotheses — the 
hypothesis of Special Creation and the hypothesis of 
Evolution. Either the multitudinous kinds of organisms 
which now exist, and the far more multitudinous kinds 
which have existed during past geologic eras, have been 
from time to time separately made ; or they have arisen 
by insensible steps, through actions such as we see habit- 
ually going on. Both hypotheses imply a Cause. The 
last, certainly as much as the first, recognizes this Cause 
as inscrutable. The point at issue is, how this inscrutable 
Cause has worked in the production of living forms. 



principles 
of biology 



V- 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF BIOLOGY 



This point, if it is to be decided at all, is to be decided 
only by examination of evidence. (Vol. I, pp. 415, 416.) 

Omitting the human race, whose defects and miseries the 
current theology professes to account for, and limiting 
ourselves to the lower creation, what must we think of 
the countless different pain-inflicting appliances and 
instincts with which animals are endowed ? Not only 
now, and not only ever since men have lived, has the 
Earth been a scene of warfare among all sentient creat- 
ures ; but palaeontology shows us that from the earliest 
eras geologically recorded, there has been going on this 

universal carnage We have unmistakable proof 

that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless 
devouring of the weak by the strong. (Vol. I, p. 425.) 

Of the animal kingdom as a whole, more than half the 
species are parasites. (Vol. I, p. 427.) 

The inquiries of biologists have proved the falsity of 
the once general belief, that the germ of each organism is 
a minute repetition of the mature organism, differing from 
it only in bulk .... Each further advance of knowledge 
confirms the belief in the unity of Nature ; and the dis- 
covery that evolution has gone on, or is going on, in so 
many departments of Nature, becomes a reason for believ- 
ing that there is no department of Nature in which it does 
not go on. (Vol. I, pp. 432, 433.) 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



33 



If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a 
man in the space of a few years ; there can surely be no 
difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate condi- 
tions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, 
give origin to the human race. (Vol. I, p. 435.) 

During general evolution it may have taken fifteen 
thousand years to establish, as distinct, two species differ- 
ing from one another no more than the foetus differs from 
itself after the lapse of an hour. (Vol. I, p. 566.) 

Let us, before proceeding, consider in what particular 
ways this further evolution, this higher life, this greater 
co-ordination of actions, may be expected to show 
itself. (Vol. II, p. 523.) 

Will it be in intelligence ? Largely, no doubt. There 
is ample room for advance in this direction, and ample 
demand for it. Our lives are universally shortened by 
our ignorance. In attaining complete knowledge of our 
own natures and of the natures of surrounding things — 
in ascertaining the conditions of existence to which we 
must conform, and in discovering means of conforming to 
them under all variations of seasons and circumstances ; 
we have abundant scope for intellectual progress. (Vol. 
II, p. 524.) 



PRINCIPLES 
OF BIOLOGY 



34 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF BIOLOGY 



Will it be in morality, that is, in greater power of self- 
regulation ? Largely also : perhaps most largely. Right 
conduct is usually come short of more from defect of will 
than defect of knowledge. For the right co-ordination of 
those complex actions which constitute human life in its 
civilized form, there goes not only the pre-requisite — 
recognition of the proper course ; but the further pre- 
requisite — a due impulse to pursue that course. On 
calling to mind our daily failures to fulfil often-repeated 
resolutions, we shall perceive that lack of the needful 
desire, rather than lack of the needful insight, is the 
chief cause of faulty action. A further endowment of 
those feelings which civilization is developing in us — 
sentiments responding to the requirements of the social 
state — emotive faculties that find their gratifications in 
the duties devolving on us — must be acquired before the 
crimes, excesses, diseases, improvidences, dishonesties, 
and cruelties, that now so greatly diminish the duration 
of life, can cease. (Vol. II, pp. 524, 525.) 

It does not follow that the struggle for life and the 
survival of the fittest must be left to work out their effects 
without mitigation. It is contended only that there shall 
not be a forcible burdening of the superior for the support 
of the inferior. Such aid to the inferior as the superior 
voluntarily yield, kept as it will be within moderate limits, 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



35 



may be given with benefit to both — relief to the one, 
moral culture to the other. And aid willingly given (little 
to the least worthy and more to the most worthy) will 
usually be so given as not to further the increase of the 
unworthy. For in proportion as the emotional nature 
becomes more evolved, and there grows up a higher sense 
of parental responsibility, the begetting of children that 
cannot be properly reared will be universally held intol- 
erable Hence with a higher moral nature will 

come a restriction on the multiplication of the inferior. 
(Vol. II, p. 533.) 




PRINCIPLES 
OF BIOLOGY 



Ill 

PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 



rF^r 


iSO 




TffemAf 










&rW* 


»$«F&fini 


v^3^- 


$§S^ 


IldBP§&iiw 




*T^ S^ 


M 




III 

PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

|HOEVER grants that from the rudiment- 
ary consciousness implied by the vacant 
stare of the infant, up to the quickly- 
apprehensive, far-seeing, and variously- 
feeling consciousness of the adult, the transition is 
through slow steps of mental progress that accompany 
slow steps of bodily progress, tactily asserts the same 
relation of Mind and Matter which is asserted by one 
who traces out the evolution of the nervous system and 
the accompanying evolution of intelligence, from the 
lowest to the highest forms of life. (Vol. I, p. 617.) 

The discovery that matter, seemingly so simple, is in 
its ultimate structure so amazingly involved ; the discov- 
ery that, while it appears to be inert, it is the seat of 
activities immense in quantity and complication ; and the 
discovery that its molecules, pulsating with almost infinite 
rapidity, propagate their pulses into the all-surrounding 
ether which carries them through inconceivable distances 



PRINCIPLES 
OF PSY- 
CHOLOGY 



4 o 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF PSY- 
CHOLOGY 



in infinitesimal times; serve to introduce us to the yet 
more marvellous discovery that molecules of each kind 
are specially affected by molecules of the same kind 
existing in the farthest regions of space. Units of sodium 
on which sunlight falls, beat in unison with their kindred 
units more than ninety millions of miles off, by which 
the yellow rays of the Sun are produced. Nay, even this 
is a totally inadequate illustration of the sympathy dis- 
played by the matter composing the visible Universe. 
The elements of our Earth are thus connected by bonds 
of inter-dependent activity, with the elements of stars so 
remote that the diameter of the Earth's orbit scarcely 
serves as a unit of measure to express their distances. 
(Vol. I, pp. 619, 620.) 

Carried to whatever extent, the inquiries of the psy- 
chologist do not reveal the ultimate nature of Mind ; any 
more than do the inquiries of the chemist reveal the 
ultimate nature of Matter, or those of the physicist the 
ultimate nature of Motion. Though the chemist is 
gravitating towards the belief that there is a primitive 
atom, out of which by variously-arranged unions are 
formed the so-called elements, as out of these by variously- 
arranged unions are formed oxides, acids, and salts, and 
the multitudinous more complex substances ; yet he knows 
no more than he did at first about this hypothetical prim- 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



4i 



itive atom. And similarly, though we have seen reason 
for thinking that there is a primitive unit of consciousness, 
that sensations of all orders are formed of such units 
combined in various relations, that by the compounding 
of these sensations and their various relations are pro- 
duced perceptions and ideas, and so on up to the highest 
thoughts and emotions ; yet this unit of consciousness 
remains inscrutable. (Vol. I, pp. 624, 625.) 

We can think of Matter only in terms of Mind. We can 
think of Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have 
pushed our explorations of the first to the uttermost limit, 
we are referred to the second for a final answer; and 
when we have got the final answer of the second we are 
referred back to the first for an interpretation of it. We 
find the value of x in terms of y; then we find the value of 
y in terms of x; and so on we may continue for ever 
without coming nearer to a solution. The antithesis of 
subject and object, never to be transcended while con- 
sciousness lasts, renders impossible all knowledge of that 
Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are united. 
(Vol. I, p. 627.) 

And this brings us to the true conclusion implied 
throughout the foregoing pages — the conclusion that it 
is one and the same Ultimate Reality which is manifested 
to us subjectively and objectively. (Vol. I, p. 627.) 



PRINCIPLES 
OF PSY- 
CHOLOGY 



42 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF PSY- 
CHOLOGY 



The Law of Evolution holds of the inner world as it 
does of the outer world. On tracing up from its low and 
vague beginnings the intelligence which becomes so mar- 
vellous in the highest beings, we find that under whatever 
aspect contemplated, it presents a progressive transforma- 
tion of like nature with the progressive transformation we 
trace in the Universe as a whole, no less than in each of 
its parts. If we study the development of the nervous 
system, we see it advancing in integration, in complexity, 
in definiteness. If we turn to its functions, we find these 
similarly show an ever-increasing inter-dependence, an 
augmentation in number and heterogeneity, and a greater 
precision. If we examine the relations of these functions 
to the actions going on in the world around, we see that 
the correspondence between them progresses in range and 
amount, becomes continually more complex and more 
special, and advances through differentiations and inte- 
grations like those everywhere going on. And when we 
observe the correlative states of consciousness, we dis- 
cover that these, too, beginning as simple, vague, and 
incoherent, become increasingly-numerous in their kinds, 
are united into aggregates which are larger, more multi- 
tudinous, and more multiform, and eventually assume those 
finished shapes we see in scientific generalizations, where 
definitely-quantitative elements are co-ordinated in defi- 
nitely-quantitative relations. (Vol. I, pp. 627, 628.) 






IV 
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY 





IV 



PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY 

RIMITIVE men, who, before any arts of 
life were developed, necessarily lived on 
wild food, implying wide dispersion of small 
numbers, were, on the one hand, not much 
habituated to associated life, and were, on the other hand, 
habituated to that uncontrolled following of immediate 
desires which goes along with separateness. So that while 
the attractive force was small the repulsive force was 
great. Only as they were led into greater gregariousness 
by local conditions which furthered the maintenance of 
many persons on a small area, could there come that 
increase of sociality required to check unrestrained action. 
(Vol. I, p. 64.) 

Before there exist in considerable degrees the senti- 
ments which find satisfaction in the happiness of others, 
there exist in considerable degrees the sentiments which 
find satisfaction in the admiration given by others. Even 



PRINCIPLES 

OF 

SOCIOLOGY 



46 



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PRINCIPLES 

OF 

SOCIOLOGY 



animals show themselves gratified by applause after 
achievement; and in men the gregarious life early opens 
and enlarges this source of pleasure. (Vol. I, pp. 64, 

650 

Great as is the vanity of the civilized, it is exceeded by 
that of the uncivilized. (Vol. I, p. 65.) 

It is thus, too, with the regulation of conduct. The 
precepts of the religion of enmity are, in early stages of 
social development, enforced mainly by the aid of this 
ego-altruistic sentiment. The duty of blood-revenge is 
made imperative by tribal opinion. (Vol. I, p. 65.) 

The habitual behaviour to women among any people, 
indicates with approximate truth, the average power of 
the altruistic sentiments; and the indication thus yielded 
tells against the character of the primitive man. (Vol. I, 
p. 70.) 

The primitive man lacks the benevolence which adjusts 
conduct for the benefit of others distant in space and 
time, the equity which implies representation of highly 
complex and abstract relations among human actions, the 
sense of duty which curbs selfishness when there are none 
present to applaud. (Vol. I, pp. 73, 74.) 

The conception of truth, being the conception of corre- 
spondence between Thoughts and Things, implies advance 
of that correspondence. (Vol. I, p. 77.) 



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47 



Just as by appearance, texture, and odour, the superior 
animal is guided in choosing food, and swallows only 
things which contain much organizable matter ; so the 
superior mind, aided by what we may figuratively call 
intellectual scent, passes by multitudes of unorganizable 
facts, but quickly detects facts full of significance, and 
takes them in as materials out of which cardinal truths 
may be elaborated. The less-developed intelligences, 
unable to decompose these more complex facts and assimi- 
late their components, and having therefore no appetites 
for them, devour with avidity facts which are mostly value- 
less; and out of the vast mass absorb very little that helps 
to form general conceptions. Concentrated diet furnished 
by the experiments of the physicist, the investigations of 
the political economist, the analyses of the psychologist, 
is intolerable to them, indigestible by them ; but instead, 
they swallow with greediness the trivial details of table- 
talk, the personalities of fashionable life, the garbage of the 
police and divorce courts ; while their reading, in addition 
to trashy novels, includes memoirs of mediocrities, vol- 
umes of gossiping correspondence, with an occasional 
history, from which they carry away a few facts about 
battles and the doings of conspicuous men. By such 
minds, this kind of intellectual provender is alone avail- 
able ; and to feed them on a higher kind would be as imprac- 
ticable as to feed a cow on meat. (Vol. I, pp. 80, 81.) 



PRINCIPLES 

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SOCIOLOGY 



48 



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PRINCIPLES 

OF 

SOCIOLOGY 



The general conclusion to which we are led is that the 
ideas of another world pass through stages of develop- 
ment. The habitat of the dead, originally conceived as 
coinciding with that of the living, gradually diverges — 
here to the adjacent forest, there to the remoter forest, 
and elsewhere to distant hills and mountains. The belief 
that the dead rejoin their ancestors, leads to further diver- 
gences, which vary according to the traditions. Stationary 
descendants of troglodytes think they return to a subter- 
ranean other-world, whence they emerged ; while immi- 
grant races have for their other-worlds the abodes of their 
fathers, to which they journey after death: over land, 
down a river, or across the sea, as the case may be. 
Societies consisting of conquerors and conquered, having 
separate traditions of origin, have separate other-worlds ; 
which differentiate into superior and inferior places, in 
correspondence with the respective positions of the two 
races. . . . Finally, where the places for the departed, or 
for superior classes of beings, are mountain-tops, there is a 
transition to an abode in the heavens. (Vol. I, pp. 216, 
217.) 

Using the phrase ancestor-worship in its broadest 
sense as comprehending all worship of the dead, be they 
of the same blood or not, we conclude that ancestor-wor- 
ship is the root of every religion. (Vol. I, p. 422.) 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



49 



That seeming chaos of puerile assumptions and mon- 
strous inferences, making up the vast mass of supersti- 
tious beliefs everywhere existing, thus falls into order 
when, instead of looking back upon it from our advanced 
stand-point, we look forward upon it from the stand-point 
of the primitive man. (Vol. I, p. 423.) 

The law which is conformed to by the evolving human 
being, and which is consequently conformed to by the 
evolving human intelligence, is of necessity conformed 
to by all products of that intelligence. . . . Just as lan- 
guage, considered as an objective product, bears the 
impress of this subjective process ; so, too, does that sys- 
tem of ideas concerning the nature of things, which the 
mind gradually elaborates. (Vol. I, p. 434.) 

While the fear of the living becomes the root of the 
political control, the fear of the dead becomes the root of 
the religious control. (Vol. I, p. 437.) 

Societies, like living bodies, begin as germs — originate 
from masses which are extremely minute in comparison 
with the masses some of them eventually reach. That 
out of small wandering hordes have arisen the largest 
societies, is a conclusion not to be contested. The im- 
plements of pre-historic peoples, ruder even than existing 
savages use, imply absence of those arts by which alone 



PRINCIPLES 

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PRINCIPLES 

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SOCIOLOGY 



great aggregations of men are made possible. Religious 
ceremonies that survived among ancient historic races, 
pointed back to a time when the progenitors of those 
races had flint knives, and got fire by rubbing together 
pieces of wood ; and must have lived in such small clusters 
as are alone possible before the rise of agriculture. (Vol. 
I, p. 463.) 

One who made the analogies between individual organi- 
zation and social organization his special subject, might 
carry them further in several directions. (Vol. I, p. 588.) 

He might illustrate the general truth that as fast as 
structure approaches completeness, modifiability dimin- 
ishes and growth ends. The finished animal, moulded 
in all details, resists change by the sum of those forces 
which have evolved its parts into their respective shapes ; 
and the finished society does the like. In either case 
results, at length, rigidity. (Vol. I, p. 588.) 

The many facts contemplated unite in proving that social 
evolution forms a part of evolution at large. Like evolving 
aggregates in general, societies show integration, both by 
simple increase of mass and by coalescence and re-coal- 
escence of masses. The change from homogeneity to hetero- 
geneity is multitudinously exemplified ; up from the simple 
tribe, alike in all its parts, to the civilized nation, full of 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



5: 



structural and functional unlikenesses. With progressing 
integration and heterogeneity goes increasing cohere?ice. 
We see the wandering group dispersing, dividing, held 
together by no bonds ; the tribe with parts made more 
coherent by subordination to a dominant man; the cluster 
of tribes united in a political plexus under a chief with 
sub-chiefs ; and so on up to the civilized nation, consoli- 
dated enough to hold together for a thousand years or 
more. (Vol. I, p. 596.) 

The marital relations, like the political relations, have 
gradually evolved; and there did not at first exist 
those ideas and feelings which among civilized nations 
give to marriage its sanctity. (Vol. I, pp. 615, 616.) 

Let us note the marvellous parallel between the change 
in the structure of the social organism and a change in the 
structure of the individual organism. We saw that definite 
nucleated cells are the components which, by aggregation, 
lay the foundations of the higher organisms; in the same 
way that the well-developed simple patriarchal groups are 
those out of which, by composition, the higher societies 
are eventually evolved. Here let me add that as, in the 
higher individual organisms, the aggregated cells which 
form the embryo, and for some time retain their separate- 
ness, gradually give place to structures in which the cell- 
form is masked and almost lost; so in the social organism, 



PRINCIPLES 

OF 

SOCIOLOGY 



5^ 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



PRINCIPLES 

OF 

SOCIOLOGY 



the family groups and compound family groups which 
were the original components, eventually lose their distin- 
guishableness, and there arise structures formed of min- 
gled individuals belonging to many different stocks. . . . 
Is there any limit to this disintegration of the family? 
(Vol. I, pp. 716, 717.) 

Already in the more advanced nations, that process 
which dissolved the larger family-aggregates, dissipating the 
tribe . . . and leaving only the family proper, has long been 
completed; and already there have taken place partial dis- 
integrations of the family proper. Along with changes 
which substituted individual responsibility for family re- 
sponsibility in respect of offences, have gone changes 
which, in some degree, have absolved the family from 
responsibility for its members in other respects. When 
by Poor Laws public provision was made for children whom 
their parents did not or could not adequately support, 
society in so far assumed family-functions. . . . Legisla- 
tion has of late further relaxed family-bonds by relieving 
parents from the care of their children's minds, and replac- 
ing education under parental direction by education under 
governmental direction. . . . This recognition of the indi- 
vidual, rather than the family, as the social unit, has 
indeed now gone so far that by many the paternal duty of 
the State is assumed as self-evident ; and criminals are 
called "our failures." (Vol. I, p. 717.) 



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53 



The salvation of every society, as of every species, 
depends on the maintenance of an absolute opposition 
between the regime of the family and the regime of the 
State. (Vol. I, p. 719.) 

To survive, every species of creature must fulfil two 
conflicting requirements. During a certain period each 
member must receive benefits in proportion to its inca- 
pacity. After that period, it must receive benefits in pro- 
portion to its capacity. . . . Obviously this law that the least 
worthy shall receive most aid, is essential as a law for the 
immature : the species would disappear in a generation 
did not parents conform to it. Now mark what is, 
contrariwise, the law for the mature. Here individuals 
gain benefits proportionate to their merits. The strong, 
the swift, the keen-sighted, the sagacious, profit by their 
respective superiorities — catch prey or escape enemies 
as the case may be. The less capable thrive less, and on 
the average of cases rear fewer offspring. The least 
capable disappear by failure to get food or from inability 
to escape. And by this process is maintained that quality 
of the species which enables it to survive in the struggle 
for existence with other species. There is thus, during 
mature life, a reversal of the principle that ruled during 
immature life. (Vol. I, pp. 719, 720.) 

Clearly, with a society as with a species, survival 
depends on conformity to both of these antagonist prin- 



PRINCIPLES 

OF 

SOCIOLOGY 



54 



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PRINCIPLES 

OF 

SOCIOLOGY 



ciples. Import into the family the law of the society, and 
let children from infancy upwards have life-sustaining 
supplies proportioned to their life-sustaining labours, and 
the society disappears forthwith by death of all its young. 
Import into the society the law of the family, and let the 
life-sustaining supplies be great in proportion as the life- 
sustaining labours are small, and the society decays from 
increase of its least worthy members and decrease of its 
most worthy members. It fails to hold its own in the 
struggle with other societies, which allow play to the nat- 
ural law that prosperity shall vary as efficiency. (Vol. I, 
p. 721.) 

Hence the necessity of maintaining this cardinal dis- 
tinction between the ethics of the Family and the ethics 
of the State. Hence the fatal result if family disintegra- 
tion goes so far that family-policy and state-policy become 
confused. (Vol. I, p. 721.) 

However fitly in the battle of life among adults, the 
proportioning of rewards to merits may be tempered by 
private sympathy in favour of the inferior ; nothing but 
evil can result if this proportioning is so interfered with 
by public arrangements, that demerit profits at the expense 
of merit. (Vol. I, p. 721.) 






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55 



The fact . . . that even intelligent animals display a 
sense of proprietorship, negatives the belief propounded 
by some, that individual property was not recognized by 
primitive men. When we see the claim to exclusive pos- 
session understood by a dog, so that he fights in defence 
of his master's clothes if left in charge of them, it becomes 
impossible to suppose that even in their lowest state men 
were devoid of those ideas and emotions which initiate 
private ownership. (Vol. II, p. 538.) 

But the conclusion of profoundest moment to which all 
lines of argument converge, is that the possibility of a 
high social state, political as well as general, fundamen- 
tally depends on the cessation of war. . . . From war has 
been gained all that it had to give. The peopling of the 
Earth by the more powerful and intelligent races, is a 
benefit in great measure achieved ; and what remains to 
be done, calls for no other agency than the quiet pressure 
of a spreading industrial civilization on a barbarism which 
slowly dwindles. That integration of simple groups into 
compound ones, and of these into doubly compound ones, 
which war has effected, until at length great nations have 
been produced, is a process already carried as far as 
seems either practicable or desirable. Empires formed of 
alien peoples habitually fall to pieces when the coercive 
power which holds them together fails. (Vol. II, pp. 
663, 664.) 



PRINCIPLES 

OF 

SOCIOLOGY 



V 
PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS 





PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS 

ONDUCT is a whole ; and, in a sense, it is 
an organic whole — an aggregate of inter- 
dependent actions performed by an organ- 
ism. (Vol. I, p. 5.) 



Complete comprehension of conduct is not to be 
obtained by contemplating the conduct of human beings 
only : we have to regard this as a part of universal con- 
duct — conduct as exhibited by all living creatures. For 
evidently this comes within our definition — acts adjusted 
to ends. The conduct of the higher animals as compared 
with that of man, and the conduct of the lower animals as 
compared with that of the higher, mainly differ in this, 
that the adjustments of acts to ends are relatively simple 
and relatively incomplete. (Vol. I, pp. 6, 7.) 

Obviously the initial adjustment of an act to an end, 
inseparable from the rest, must be included with them 
under the same general head ; and obviously from this 



PRINCIPLES 
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6o 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF ETHICS 



initial simple adjustment, having intrinsically no moral 
character, we pass by degrees to the most complex 
adjustments and to those on which moral judgments are 
passed. (Vol. I, p. 10.) 

Conduct is distinguished from the totality of actions by 
excluding purposeless actions ; but during evolution this 
distinction arises by degrees. (Vol. I, p. 10.) 

Conduct which furthers race-maintenance evolves hand- 
in-hand with the conduct which furthers self- maintenance. 
(Vol. I, p. 16.) 

In large measure the adjustments of acts to ends 
which we have been considering, are components of that 
" struggle for existence " carried on both between members 
of the same species and between members of different 
species ; and, very generally, a successful adjustment 
made by one creature involves an unsuccessful adjust- 
ment made by another creature, either of the same kind 
or of a different kind. (Vol. I, p. 17.) 

While the form of conduct is such that adjustments of 
acts to ends by some necessitate non-adjustments by 
others, there remains room for modifications which bring 
conduct into a form avoiding this, and so making the 
totality of life greater. (Vol. I, p. 18.) 



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61 



Beyond so behaving that each achieves his ends without 
preventing others from achieving their ends, the members 
of a society may give mutual help in the achievement 
of ends. And if ... . fellow citizens can make easier 
for one another the adjustments of acts to ends, then their 
conduct assumes a still higher phase of evolution. (Vol. 
I, p. 19.) 

Ethics has for its subject-matter, that form which uni- 
versal conduct assumes during the last stages of its 
evolution. (Vol. I, p. 20.) 

We call these articles good or bad according as they 
are well or ill adapted to achieve prescribed ends. (Vol. 
I, p. 21.) 

Those doings of men which, morally considered, are 
indifferent, we class as good or bad according to their 
success or failure. (Vol. I, p. 22.) 

Other things equal, conduct is right or wrong according 
as its special acts, well or ill adjusted to special ends, do 
or do not further the general end of self preservation. 
(Vol. I, p. 23.) 

Acts are called good or bad, according as they are well 
or ill adjusted to ends. (Vol. I, p. 25.) 



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OF ETHICS 



62 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF ETHICS 



Is there any assumption made in calling good the acts 
conducive to life, in self or others, and bad those which 
directly or indirectly tend towards death, special or 
general ? Yes ; an assumption of extreme significance 
has been made — an assumption underlying all moral 
estimates. (Vol. I, p. 26.) 

The question to be definitely raised and answered 
before entering on any ethical discussion, is the question 
of late much agitated — Is life worth living ? Shall we 
take the pessimist view ? or shall we take the optimist 
view ? or shall we, after weighing pessimistic and opti- 
mistic arguments, conclude that the balance is in favour 
of a qualified optimism ? (Vol. I, p. 26.) 

On the answer to this question depends entirely every 
decision concerning the goodness or badness of conduct. 
(Vol. I, p. 26.) 

The ultimate question, therefore, is — Has evolution 
been a mistake ; and especially that evolution which 
improves the adjustment of acts to ends in ascending 
stages of organization ? If it is held that there had better 
not have been any animate existence at all, and that the 
sooner it comes to an end the better; then one set of 
conclusions with respect to conduct emerges. If, con- 
trariwise, it is held that there is a balance in favour of 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



animate existence, and if, still further, it is held that in the 
future this balance may be increased ; then the opposite 
set of conclusions emerges. (Vol. I, pp. 26, 27.) 

There is one postulate in which pessimists and opti- 
mists agree. Both their arguments assume it to be self- 
evident that life is good or bad, according as it does, or 
does not, bring a surplus of agreeable feeling. The 
pessimist says he condemns life because it results in more 
pain than pleasure. The optimist defends life in the 
belief that it brings more pleasure than pain. Each 
makes the kind of sentiency which accompanies life the 
test. They agree that the justification for life as a state 
of being, turns on this issue — whether the average con- 
sciousness rises above indifference-point into pleasurable 
feeling or falls below it into painful feeling. (Vol. I, 
pp. 27, 28.) 

There is no escape from the admission that in calling 
good the conduct which subserves life, and bad the con- 
duct which hinders or destroys it, and in so implying that 
life is a blessing and not a curse, we are inevitably assert- 
ing that conduct is good or bad according as its total 
effects are pleasurable or painful. (Vol. I, p. 28.) 

No school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim 
a desirable state of feeling called by whatever name — 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF ETHICS 



gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure somewhere, 
at some time, to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable 
element of the conception. It is as much a necessary 
form of moral intuition as space is a necessary form of 
intellectual intuition. (Vol. I, p. 46.) 

The conception of natural causation is so imperfectly 
developed, that there is only an indistinct consciousness 
that throughout the whole of human conduct, necessary 
relations of causes and effects prevail ; and that from 
them are ultimately derived all moral rules, however much 
these may be proximately derived from moral intuitions. 
(Vol. I. p. 56.) 

A preparation in the simpler sciences is pre-supposed. 
Ethics has a physical aspect ; since it treats of human 
activities which, in common with all expenditures of 
energy, conform to the law of the persistence of energy : 
moral principles must conform to physical necessities. It 
has a biological aspect ; since it concerns certain effects, 
inner and outer, individual and social, of the vital changes 
going on in the highest type of animal. It has a pyscho- 
logical aspect ; for its subject-matter is an aggregate of 
actions that are prompted by feelings and guided by 
intelligence. And it has a sociological aspect ; for these 
actions, some of them directly and all of them indirectly, 
affect associated beings. (Vol. I, pp. 62, 63.) 



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65 



Undeniable as it is that another's behaviour to us is 
made up of movements of his body and limbs, of his 
facial muscles, and of his vocal apparatus ; it yet seems 
paradoxical to say that these are the only elements of 
conduct really known by us, while the elements of con- 
duct which we exclusively think of as constituting it, are 
not known but inferred. (Vol. I, p. 64.) 

From the biological point of view then, we see that the 
connexions between pleasure and beneficial action and 
between pain and detrimental action, which arose when 
sentient existence began, and have continued among 
animate creatures up to man, are generally displayed in 
him also throughout the lower and more completely- 
organized part of his nature ; and must be more and more 
fully displayed throughout the higher part of his nature, 
as fast as his adaptation to the conditions of social life 
increases. (Vol. I, p. 87.) 

In the normal order, pleasures, great and small, are 
stimulants to the processes by which life is maintained. 
(Vol. I, p. 89.) 

Every power, bodily and mental, is increased by "good 
spirits ; " which is our name for a general emotional 
satisfaction. ... In brief, as every medical man knows, 
there is no such tonic as happiness. (Vol. I, pp. 90, 91.) 



PRINCIPLES 
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66 



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principles While there is a benefit to be presently felt by the 
of ethics ! whole organism from the due performance of each func- 
tion, there is an immediate benefit from the exaltation of 
its functions at large caused by the accompanying pleas- 
ure ; and from pains, whether of excess or defect, there 
also come these double effects, immediate and remote. 
(Vol. I, p. 91.) 

Non-recognition of these general truths vitiates moral 
speculation at large. From the estimate of right and 
wrong habitually framed, these physiological effects 
wrought on the actor by his feelings are entirely omitted. 
It is tacitly assumed that pleasures and pains have no 
reactions on the body of the recipient, affecting his fitness 
for the duties of life. The only reactions recognized are 
those on character; respecting which the current sup- 
position is, that acceptance of pleasures is detrimental 
and submission to pains beneficial. The notion, remotely 
descended from the ghost-theory of the savage, that mind 
and body are independent, has, among its various impli- 
cations, this belief that states of consciousness are in no 
wise related to bodily states. " You have had your grati- 
fication — it is past; and you are as you were before," 
says the moralist to one. And to another he says, " You 
have borne the suffering — it is over ; and there the matter 
ends." Both statements are false. Leaving out of view 
indirect results, the direct results are that the one has 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



6? 



moved a step away from death and the other has moved a 
step towards death. (Vol. I, pp. 91, 92.) 

Led by the tacit assumption, common to Pagan stoics 
and Christian ascetics, that we are so diabolically organ- 
ized that pleasures are injurious and pains beneficial, 
people on all sides yield examples of lives blasted by 
persisting in actions against which their sensations rebel. 
(Vol. I, pp. 93, 94.) 

Mind consists of feelings and the relations among feel- 
ings. By composition of the relations, and ideas of 
relations, intelligence arises. (Vol. I, p. 104.) 

As guides, the feelings have authorities proportionate 
to the degrees in which they are removed by their com- 
plexity and their ideality from simple sensations and 
appetites. (Vol. I, p. 109.) 

The general truth that pursuit of proximate satisfactions 
is, under one aspect, inferior to pursuit of ultimate satis- 
factions, has led to the belief that proximate satisfactions 
must not be valued. (Vol. I, p. 109.) 

" Pleasant but wrong," is a phrase frequently used in a 

way implying that the two are naturally connected 

Such beliefs result from a confused apprehension of the 
general truth that the more compound and representative 
feelings are, on the average, of higher authority than the 
simple and presentative feelings. (Vol. I, p. 112.) 



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OF ETHICS 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF ETHICS 



Unquestionably the essential trait in the moral con- 
sciousness, is the control of some feeling or feelings by 
some other feeling or feelings. (Vol. I, p. 113.) 

The simpler and less ideal feelings are consciously 
over-ruled by the more complex and ideal feelings ; and 
though, at first, they are practically co-extensive and 
undistinguished ; yet, in the course of social evidence 
they differentiate ; and, eventually, the moral control with 
its accompanying conceptions and sentiments, emerges as 
independent. (Vol. I, p. 115.) 

The earliest enacted punishments are those for insub- 
ordination and for breaches of observances which express 
subordination — all of them militant in origin. . . . The 
fact that success in war is endangered if his followers 
fight among themselves, forces itself on the attention of 
the ruler. He has a strong motive for restraining quarrels, 
and therefore for preventing the aggressions which cause 
quarrels; and as his power becomes greater he forbids 
the aggressions and inflicts punishments for disobedience. 
Presently, political restraints of this class, like those of 
the preceding class, are enforced by religious restraints. 
The sagacious chief, succeeding in war partly because he 
thus enforces order among his followers, leaves behind 
him a tradition of the commands he habitually gave. 
Dread of his ghost tends to produce regard for these 



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69 



commands ; and they eventually acquire sacredness. 
With further social evolution come, in like manner, further 
interdicts, checking aggressions of less serious kinds ; 
until eventually there grows up a body of civil laws. 
(Vol. I, pp. 116-118.) 

The check is not a mental representation of the evil 
consequences which the forbidden act will, in the nature 
of things, cause ; but it is a mental representation of the 
factitious evil consequences. Down to our own time we 
trace in legal phrases, the original doctrine that the 
aggression of one citizen on another is wrong, and will be 
punished, not so much because of the injury done him, as 
because of the implied disregard of the king's will. 
(Vol. I, p. 118.) 

Moralists of one class derive moral rules from the 
commands of a supreme political power. Those of 
another class recognize no other origin for them than the 
revealed divine will. And though men who take social 
prescription for their guide do not formulate their doctrine, 
yet the belief, frequently betrayed, that conduct which 
society permits is not blameworthy, implies that there are 
those who think right and wrong can be made such by 
public opinion. (Vol. I, p. 119.) 

The moral motive differs from the motives it is associ- 
ated with in this, that instead of being constituted by 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF ETHICS 



representations of incidental, collateral, non-necessary 
consequences of acts, it is constituted by representations 
of consequences which the acts naturally produce. These 
representations are not all distinct, though some of such 
are usually present ; but they form an assemblage of 
indistinct representations accumulated by experience bi 
the results of like acts in the life of the individual, super- 
posed on a still more indistinct but voluminous conscious- 
ness due to the inherited effects of such experiences in 
progenitors : forming a feeling that is at once massive 
and vague. (Vol. I, p. 121.) 

The pleasures of pursuit are much more those derived 
from the efficient use of means than those derived from 
the end itself. (Vol. I, p. 158.) 

We are shown by dogs that when no creature is caught 
there is still a gratification in the act of catching. The 
eagerness with which a dog runs after stones, or dances 
and barks in anticipation of jumping into the water after 
a stick, proves that apart from the satisfaction of appe- 
tite, and apart even from the satisfaction of killing prey, 
there is a satisfaction in the successful pursuit of a mov- 
ing object. Throughout, then, we see that the pleasure 
attendant on the use of means to achieve an end, itself 
becomes an end. (Vol. I, p. 159.) 



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7i 



The doctrine that perfection or excellence of nature 
should be the object of pursuit, is in one sense true ; for 
it tacitly recognizes that ideal form of being which the 
highest life implies, and to which Evolution tends. There 
is a truth, also, in the doctrine that virtue must be the 
aim ; for this is another form of the doctrine that the aim 
must be to fulfil the conditions to achievement of the 
highest life. That the intuitions of a moral faculty should 
guide our conduct, is a proposition in which a truth is 
contained ; for these intuitions are the slowly organized 
results of experiences received by the race while living in 
presence of these conditions. And that happiness is the 
supreme end is beyond question true; for this is the con- 
comitant of that highest life which every theory of moral 
guidance has distinctly or vaguely in view. (Vol. I, pp. 
171, 172.) 

Not only men of different races, but also different men 
of the same race, and even the same men at different 
periods of life, have different standards of happiness. 
(Vol. I, P . 174.) 

When we have got rid of the tendency to think that cer- 
tain modes of activity are necessarily pleasurable because 
they give us pleasure, and that other modes which do not 
please us are necessarily unpleasing; we shall see that 
the re-moulding of human nature into fitness for the 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF ETHICS 



requirements of social life, must eventually make all 
needful activities pleasurable, while it makes displeasur- 
able all activities at variance with these requirements. 
. . . . We shall infer that along with decrease of those 
emotions for which the social state affords little or no 
scope, and increase of those which it persistently exer- 
cises, the things now done with dislike from a sense of 
obligation will be done with immediate liking, and the 
things desisted from as a matter of duty will be desisted 
from because they are repugnant. (Vol. I, pp. 183, 184.) 

The power of continued application which in the primi- 
tive man is very small, has among ourselves become con- 
siderable. (Vol. I, p. 184.) 

Activities appropriate to their needs which give pleas- 
ures to savages have ceased to be pleasurable to many of 
the civilized ; while the civilized have acquired capacities 
for other appropriate activities and accompanying pleas- 
ures which savages had no capacities for. (Vol. I, p. 185.) 

One who, leaving behind both primitive dogmas and 
primitive ways of looking at things, has, while accepting 
scientific conclusions acquired those habits of thought 
which science generates, will regard the conclusion above 
drawn as inevitable. He will find it impossible to believe 
that the processes which have heretofore so moulded all 



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73 



beings to the requirements of their lives that they get 
satisfactions in fulfilling them, will not hereafter continue 
so moulding them. (Vol. I, pp. 185, 186.) 

Ethics has to recognize the truth, recognized in uneth- 
ical thought, that egoism comes before altruism. (Vol. I, 
p. 187.) 

Throughout past eras, the life, vast in amount and 
varied in kind, which has overspread the Earth, has pro- 
gressed in subordination to the law that every individual 
shall gain by whatever aptitude it has for fulfilling the 
conditions to its existence The law that each crea- 
ture shall take the benefits and the evils of its own nature, 
be they those derived from ancestry or those due to self- 
produced modifications, has been the law under which 
life has evolved thus far ; and it must continue to be the 
law however much further life may evolve. (Vol. I, pp. 
188, 189.) 

Any arrangements which in a considerable degree pre- 
vent superiority from profiting by the rewards of superi- 
ority, or shield inferiority from the evils it entails — 
any arrangements which tend to make it as well to be 
inferior as to be superior ; are arrangements diametrically 
opposed to the progress of organization and the reaching 
of a higher life. (Vol. I, p. 189.) 



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OF ETHICS 



Incapacity of every kind and of whatever degree, 
causes unhappiness directly and indirectly — directly by 
the pain consequent on the over-taxing of inadequate 
faculty, and indirectly by the non-fulfilment, or imperfect 
fulfilment, of certain conditions to welfare. Conversely, 
capacity of every kind sufficient for the requirement, 
conduces to happiness immediately and remotely — 
immediately by the pleasure accompanying the normal 
exercise of each power that is up to its work, and 
remotely by the pleasures which are furthered by the 
ends achieved. (Vol. I, p. 189.) 

The mentally-inferior individual of any race suffers 
negative and positive miseries ; while the mentally-superior 
individual receives negative and positive gratifications. 
(Vol. I, p. 190.) 

The conclusion forced on us is that the pursuit of indi- 
vidual happiness within those limits prescribed by social 
conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the 
greatest general happiness. (Vol. I, p. 190.) 

Undue altruism increases egoism ; both directly in 
contemporaries and indirectly in posterity. (Vol. I, p. 

198.) 

A rational egoism, so far from implying a more egoistic 
human nature, is consistent with a human nature that is 
less egoistic. (Vol. I, p. 199.) 



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75 



Asserting the due claims of self, is, by implication, 
drawing a limit beyond which the claims are undue ; and 
is, by consequence, bringing into greater clearness the 
claims of others. (Vol. I, p. 200.) 

As now carried on, life hourly sets the claims of pres- 
ent self against the claims of future self, and hourly 
brings individual interests face to face with the interests 
of other individuals, taken singly or as associated. In 
many of such cases the decisions can be nothing more 
than compromises ; and ethical science, here necessarily 
empirical, can do no more than aid in making compromises 
that are the least objectionable. (Vol. I, p. 284.) 

Justice, which formulates the range of conduct and 
limitations to conduct hence arising, is at once the most 
important division of Ethics and the division which admits 
of the greatest deflniteness. (Vol. I, pp. 284, 285.) 

The maxim commonly supposed to be especially 
Christian, but which, as we have seen, was in kindred 
forms enunciated among various peoples in pre-Christian 
days, shows us this. " Do unto others as ye would that 
they should do unto you," is an injunction which merges 
generosity and justice in one. In the first place, it makes 
no distinction between that which you are called upon to 



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PRINCIPLES 
OF ETHICS 



do to another on grounds of equity, and that which you 
are called upon to do to him on grounds of kindness ; and, 
in the second place, it includes no recognition, overt or 
tacit, of those claims of the doer which we call "rights." 
In the consciousness of justice properly so-called, there 
is included an egoistic as well as an altruistic element — 
a consciousness of the claim of self and a sympathetic 
consciousness of the claims of others. (Vol. I, p. 377.) 




VI 

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS 





VI 

ESSAYS 

THE AMERICANS 

ANIFESTLY, those who framed your 
Constitution never dreamed that twenty 
thousand citizens would go to the poll led 
by a "boss." (Vol. Ill, p. 474.) 



Then you think that Republican institutions are a fail- 
ure ? (Vol. Ill, p. 474.) 

By no means : I imply no such conclusion The 

Americans got their form of government by a happy 
accident, not by normal progress, and they would have to 
go back before they could go forward. (Vol. Ill, p. 474.) 

The current theory is that if the young are taught what 
is right, and the reasons why it is right, they will do 
what is right when they grow up. But considering what 
religious teachers have been doing these two thousand 



ESSAYS 



8o 



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ESSAYS 



years, it seems to me that all history is against the con- 
clusion Personal interests will sway the men in 

the ranks, as they sway the men above them ; and the 
education which fails to make the last consult public good 
rather than private good, will fail to make the first do it. 
The benefits of political purity are so general and remote, 
and the profit to each individual is so inconspicuous, that 
the common citizen, educate him as you like, will habitu- 
ally occupy himself with his personal affairs, and hold 
it not worth his while to fight against each abuse as soon 
as it appears. Not lack of information, but lack of certain 
moral sentiment, is the root of the evil. (Vol. Ill, 
p. 476.) 

You mean that people have not a sufficient sense of 
public duty? (Vol. Ill, p. 476.) 

Probably it will surprise you if I say the American has 
not, I think, a sufficiently quick sense of his own claims, 
and, at the same time, as a necessary consequence, not a 
sufficiently quick sense of the claims of others — for the 
two traits are organically related. I observe that they 
tolerate various small interferences and dictations which 
Englishmen are prone to resist. (Vol. Ill, p. 476.) 

As Hamlet says, there is such a thing as " greatly to 
find quarrel in a straw," when the straw implies a prin- 
ciple. If, as you say of the American, he pauses to con- 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



sider whether he can afford the time and trouble — 

whether it will pay, corruption is sure to creep in 

As one of your early statesmen said — " The price of 
liberty is eternal vigilance." But it is far less against 
foreign aggressions upon national liberty that this vigi- 
lance is required, than against the insidious growth of 
domestic interferences with personal liberty. (Vol. Ill, 
P- 477-) 

The trait I refer to comes out in various ways, small 
and great. It is shown by the disrespectful manner in 
which individuals are dealt with in your journals — the 
placarding of public men in sensational headings, the 
dragging of private people and their affairs into print. 
There seems to be a notion that the public have a right to 
intrude on private life as far as they like ; and this I take 
to be a kind of moral trespassing. . . . Free, institutions 
can be properly worked only by men, each of whom is 
jealous of his own rights, and also sympathetically jealous 
of the rights of others — who will neither himself aggress 
on his neighbours in small things or great, nor tolerate 
aggression on them by others. The Republican form of 
government is the highest form of government ; but 
because of this it requires the highest type of human 
nature — a type nowhere at present existing. (Vol. Ill, 
pp. 478, 479.) 



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It may, I think, be concluded that, both because of its 
size and the heterogeneity of its components, the American 
nation will be a long time in evolving its ultimate form, 
but that its ultimate form will be high. One great result 
is, I think, tolerably clear. From biological truths it is to 
be inferred that the eventual mixture of the allied varieties 
of the Aryan race forming the population, will produce a 
finer type of man than has hitherto existed ; and a type of 
man more plastic, more adaptable, more capable of under- 
going the modifications needful for complete social life. I 
think that whatever difficulties they may have to surmount, 
and whatever tribulations they may have to pass through, 
the Americans may reasonably look forward to a time 
when they will have produced a civilization grander than 
any the world has known. (Vol. Ill, p. 480.) 



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33 





SOCIAL STATICS 

THE MORAL-SENSE DOCTRINE 

AD we no other inducement to eat than 
that arising from the prospect of certain 
^$ ^ advantages to be thereby obtained, it is 
a^m scarcely probable that our bodies would be 
so well cared for as now. One can quite imagine that 
were we deprived of that punctual monitor — appetite, 
and left to the guidance of some reasoned code of rules, 
such rules, were they never so philosophical, and the 
benefits of obeying them never so obvious, would form 
but a very inefficient substitute. Or, instead of that pow- 
erful affection by which men are led to nourish and pro- 
tect their offspring, did there exist merely an abstract 
opinion that it is proper or necessary to maintain the popu- 
lation of the globe, it is questionable whether the annoy- 
ance, anxiety, and expense, of providing for a posterity, 
would not so far exceed the anticipated good, as to involve 
a rapid extinction of the species. And if, in addition to 
these needs of the body and of the race, all other require- 
ments of our nature were similarly consigned to the sole 
care of the intellect — were knowledge, property, freedom, 
reputation, friends, sought only at its dictation — then 



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would our investigations be so perpetual, our estimates so 
complex, our decisions so difficult, that life would be wholly 
occupied in the collection of evidence and the balancing 
of probabilities, (p. 15.) 

Quite different, however, is the method of nature. 
Answering to each of the actions which it is requisite for 
us to perform, we find in ourselves some prompter called 
a desire ; and the more essential the action, the more 
powerful is the impulse to its performance, and the more 
intense the gratification derived therefrom. Thus, the 
longings for food, for sleep, for warmth, are irresistible; 
and quite independent of foreseen advantages. The con- 
tinuance of the race is secured by others equally strong, 
whose dictates are followed, not in obedience to reason, 
but often in defiance of it. (p. 16.) 

May we not then reasonably expect to find kindred 
instrumentalities prompting the conduct called moral ? 
All must admit that we are guided to our bodily welfare by 
instincts ; that from instincts also, spring those domes- 
tic relationships by which other important objects are 
compassed ; and that certain prompters called sentiments 
secure our indirect benefit, by regulating social intercourse. 
Is it not then probable that a like mental mechanism is at 
work throughout ; and that upright conduct in each being 
necessary to the happiness of all, there exists in us an 



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05 



impulse towards such conduct ; or, in other words, that 
we possess a "Moral Sense?" (p. 16.) 

WHAT IS MORALITY 

Treating, therefore, as it does on the abstract principles 
of right conduct, a system of pure ethics cannot recognize 
evil, or any of those conditions which evil generates. 

To all questions which presuppose some antecedent 
unlawful action, such as — Should a barrister defend any 
one whom he believes to be guilty? Ought a man to 
break an oath which he has taken to do something wrong ? 
Is it proper to publish the misconduct of our fellows ? — 
the perfect law can give no reply, because it does not 
recognize the premises. In seeking to settle such points 
on purely ethical principles, moralists have attempted 
impossibilities. As well might they have tried to solve 
mathematically a series of problems respecting crooked 
lines and broken-backed curves, or to deduce from the 
theorems of mechanics the proper method of setting to 
work a dislocated machine. No conclusions can lay claim 
to absolute truth but such as depend upon truths which 
are themselves absolute, (pp. 25, 26.) 

THE EVANESCENCE [ ? DIMINUTION ] OF EVIL 

All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution 
to conditions, (p. 28.) 



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Equally true is it that evil perpetually tends to disap- 
pear. In virtue of an essential principle of life, this non- 
adaptation of an organism to its conditions is ever being 
rectified ; and modification of one or both, continues until 
the adaptation is complete. Whatever possesses vitality, 
from the elementary cell up to man himself, inclusive, 
obeys this law. (p. 28.) 

Keeping in mind these truths, that all evil results from 
the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions ; and that 
where this non-adaptation exists it is continually being 
diminished by the changing of constitution to suit condi- 
tions; we shall be prepared for comprehending the present 
position of the human race. (pp. 30, 31.) 

But why is not man adapted to the social state ? 

Simply because he yet partially retains the characteris- 
tics appropriate to an antecedent state. The respects in 
which he is not fitted to society, are the respects in which 
he is fitted for his original predatory life. His primitive 
circumstances required that he should sacrifice the welfare 
of other beings to his own ; his present circumstances 
require that he shall not do so ; and in so far as his old 
attribute still clings to him, he is unfit for the social state. 
All sins of men against one another, from the cannibalism 
of the Fijian to the crimes and venalities we see around 
us; the felonies which fill our prisons, the trickeries of 



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87 



trade, the quarrellings of class with class and of nation 
with nation, have their causes comprehended under this 
generalization, (p. 31.) 

Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his 
original state ; he needs another to fit him for his present 
state ; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, 
in process of adaptation. And the belief in human per- 
fectibility merely amounts to the belief that, in virtue of 
this process, man will eventually become completely suited 
to his mode of life. (pp. 31, 32.) 

Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity 
Instead of civilization being artificial it is a part of nature; 
all of a piece with the development of an embryo or the 
unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have 
undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law 
underlying the whole organic creation ; and provided the 
human race continues, and the constitution of things 
remains the same, those modifications must end in com- 
pleteness. As surely as the tree becomes bulky when it 
stands alone, and slender if one of a group ; as surely as 
a blacksmith's arm grows large, and the skin of a labourer's 
hand thick ; as surely as the eye tends to become long- 
sighted in the sailor, and short-sighted in the student ; as 
surely as a clerk acquires rapidity in writing and calcula- 
tion ; as surely as the musician learns to detect an error 



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SOCIAL 
STATICS 



of a semitone amidst what seems to others a very babel 
of sounds ; as surely as a passion grows by indulgence 
and diminishes when restrained; as surely as a disregarded 
conscience becomes inert, and one that is obeyed active ; 
as surely as there is any meaning in such terms as habit, 
custom, practice; — so surely must the human faculties be 
moulded into complete fitness for the social state ; so 
surely must evil and immorality disappear ; so surely must 
man become perfect, (p. 32.) 

GREATEST HAPPINESS MUST BE SOUGHT INDIRECTLY 

It is for us to ascertain the conditions by conforming to 
which greatest happiness may be attained, (p. 33.) 

Man is a visible, tangible entity, having properties. In 
the circumstances which surround him there are unchang- 
ing necessities. Life depends on the fulfilment of certain 
functions ; and happiness is a particular kind of life. 
Surely, then, if we would know how, in the midst of these 
circumstances, the being Man must live so as to achieve 
greatest happiness, we ought first to determine what the 
essential conditions are. . . . Only in one way can the 
desideratum be reached. What that one way is must 
depend on the fundamental necessities of our position. 
And if we would discover it, our first step must be to 
ascertain those necessities, (p. 33.) 



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At the head of them stands this unalterable fact — the 
social state, (p. 33.) 

Here, then, is the first of those fixed conditions to the 
obtainment of greatest happiness, necessitated by the 
social state. It is the fulfilment of this condition which 
we express by the word justice, (p. 34.) 

To compass greatest happiness, the human constitution 
must be such that each man may fulfil his own nature, 
not only without diminishing other men's spheres of 
activity, but without inflicting unhappiness on other men 
in any direct or indirect way. . . . The observance of it 
may be called negative beneficence, (p. 34.) 

To the primary requisite that each shall be able to get 
complete happiness without diminishing the happiness of 
the rest, we must now add the secondary one that each 
shall be capable of receiving happiness from the happiness 
of the rest. Compliance with this requisite implies posi- 
tive beneficence, (p. 35.) 

Lastly, there must go to the production of the greatest 
happiness the further condition, that, whilst duly regard- 
ful of the preceding limitations, each individual shall 
perform all those acts required to fill up the measure of 
his own private happiness, (p. 35.) 



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STATICS 



V 



These then are necessities. They are not matters of 
opinion, but matters of fact. Denial of them is impossi- 
ble, for nothing else can be stated but what is self-contra- 
dictory Everything must be good or bad, right 

or wrong, in virtue of its accordance or discordance with 
them. Our whole code of duty is comprehended in the 
endeavour to live up to these necessities. If we find 
pleasure in doing this it is well ; if not, our aim must be 
to acquire that pleasure. . . . Hence it is for us to 
habituate ourselves to fulfil these requirements as fast as 
we can. The social state is a necessity. The conditions 
to greatest happiness under that state are fixed. Our 
characters are the only things not fixed. They, then, 
must be moulded into fitness for the conditions. And 
all moral teaching and discipline must have for its object 
to hasten this process, (p. 35.) 

SECONDARY DERIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE 

This so solid-looking principle of " the greatest happi- 
ness of the greatest number," needs but to have a light 
brought near it, and lo ! it explodes into the astounding 
assertion, that all men have equal rights to happiness (p. 
18) — an assertion far more sweeping and revolutionary 
than any of those which are assailed with so much scorn. 

(P- 54-) 



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9i 



FIRST PRINCIPLE 

Thus are we brought by several routes to the same 
conclusion. Whether we reason our way from those fixed 
conditions under which alone greatest happiness can be 
realized — whether we draw our inferences from man's 
constitution, considering him as a congeries of faculties — 
or whether we listen to the monitions of a certain mental 
agency, which seems to have the function of guiding us 
in this matter ; we are alike taught, as the law of right 
social relationships, that — Every man has freedom to do 
all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom 
of any other man. (p. 55.) 

SOCIALISM 

Our first principle requires, not that all shall have like 
shares of the things which minister to the gratification of 
the faculties, but that all shall have like freedoms to 
pursue those things — shall have like scope. It is one 
thing to give to each an opportunity of acquiring the 
objects he desires ; it is another, and quite a different 
thing, to give the objects themselves, no matter whether 
due endeavour has or has not been made to obtain them. 
(pp. 65, 66.) 

If, therefore, out of many starting with like fields of 
activity, one obtains, by his greater strength, greater 



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SOCIAL 
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ingenuity, or greater application, more gratifications and 
sources of gratification than the rest, and does this with- 
out trenching upon the equal freedoms of the rest, the 
moral law assigns him an exclusive right to all those extra 
gratifications and sources of gratification ; nor can the 
rest take them from him without claiming for themselves 
greater liberty of action than he claims, and thereby 
violating that law. Whence it follows, that an equal 
apportionment of the fruits of the earth among all, is not 
consistent with pure justice, (p. 66.) 

If, as M. Proudhon asserts, " all property is robbery " 
— if no one can equitably become the exclusive possessor 
of any article, or, as we say, obtain a right to it — then, 
among other consequences, it follows that a man can 
have no right to the things he consumes for food. And 
if these are not his before eating them, how can they 
become his at all ? As Locke asks, " when do they begin 
to be his ? when he digests ? or when he eats ? or when 
he boils ? or when he brings them home ? " If no previ- 
ous acts can make them his property, neither can any 
process of assimilation do it : not even absorption of 
them into the tissues. Wherefore, pursuing the idea, we 
arrive at the curious conclusion, that as the whole of his 
bones, muscles, skin, &c, have been thus built up from 
nutriment not belonging to him, a man has no property 



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93 



in his own flesh and blood — has no more claim to his 
own limbs than he has to the limbs of another ; and has 
as good a right to his neighbour's body as to his own ! 
Did we exist after the same fashion as those compound 
polyps, in which a number of individuals are based upon 
a living trunk common to them all, such a theory would 
be rational enough. But until Communism can be 
carried to that extent, it will be best to stand by the old 
doctrine, (pp. 66, 67.) 

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 

Whoso urges the mental inferiority of women in bar of 
their claim to equal rights with men, may be met in 
various ways. 

1. If rights are to be meted out to the two sexes in 
the ratio of their respective amounts of intelligence, then 
must the same system be acted upon in the apportion- 
ment of rights between man and man 

2. In like manner it will follow that, as there are here 
and there women of unquestionably greater ability than 
the average of men, some women ought to have greater 
rights than some men. 

3. Wherefore, instead of a certain fixed allotment of 
rights to all males and another to all females, the hypoth- 
esis itself involves an infinite gradation of rights, 
irrespective of sex entirely, and sends us once more in 



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STATICS 



search of those unattainable desiderata — a standard by 
which to measure capacity, and another by which to 
measure rights, (p. 73.) 

What is it that we mean by rights ? Nothing else than 
freedom to exercise the faculties. And what is the 
meaning of the assertion that woman is mentally inferior 
to man ? Simply that her faculties are less powerful. 
What then does the dogma, that because woman is men- 
tally inferior to man she has less extensive rights, amount 
to? Just this, — that because woman has weaker facul- 
ties than man, she ought not to have like liberty with 
him to exercise the faculties she has I (pp. 73, 74.) 

Command is a blight to the affections. Whatsoever of 
beauty — whatsoever of poetry, there is in the passion 
that unites the sexes, withers up and dies in the cold 
atmosphere of authority, (p. 76.) 

The fact that any proposed principle of conduct is 
at once fully practicable — requires no reformation of 
human nature for its complete realization — as not a 
proof of its truth : is proof rather of its error, (p. 77.) 

Hence, whenever society shall have become civilized 
enough to recognize the equality of rights between the 
sexes — when women shall have attained to a clear 
perception of what is due to them, and men to a nobility 



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95 



of feeling which shall make them concede to women the 
freedom which they themselves claim — humanity will 
have undergone such a modification as to render an 
equality of rights practicable, (p. 78.) 

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE 

Label men how you please with titles of " upper," and 
"middle," and "lower," you cannot prevent them being 
units of the same society, acted upon by the same spirit 
of the age, moulded after the same type of character. 
The mechanical law that action and reaction are equal, 
has its moral analogue. The deed of one man to another 
tends ultimately to produce a like effect on both, be the 
deed good or bad. (p. 100.) 



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EDUCATION 




EDUCATION 

T has been truly remarked that, in order of 
time, decoration precedes dress. Among 
people who submit to great physical suffer- 
ing that they may have themselves hand- 
somely tattooed, extremes of temperature are borne with 
but little attempt at mitigation, (p. i.) 

It is not a little curious that the like relations hold with 
the mind. Among mental as among bodily acquisitions, 
the ornamental comes before the useful. Not only in 
times past, but almost as much in our own era, that 
knowledge which conduces to personal well-being has 
been postponed to that which brings applause, (p. 2.) 

To get above some and be reverenced by them, and to 
propitiate those who are above us, is the universal strug- 
gle in which the chief energies of life are expended. By 
the accumulation of wealth, by style of living, by beauty of 
dress, by display of knowledge or intellect, each tries to 
subjugate others ; and so aids in weaving that ramified 
network of restraints by which society is kept in order. 
It is not the savage chief only, who, in formidable war- 
paint, with scalps at his belt, aims to strike awe into his 
inferiors ; it is not only the belle who, by elaborate toilet, 



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97 



polished manners, and numerous accomplishments*, strives 
to " make conquests ; " but the scholar, the historian, the 
philosopher, use their acquirements to the same end. We 
are none of us content with quietly unfolding our own 
individualities to the full in all directions ; but have a 
restless craving to impress our individualities upon oth- 
ers, and in some way subordinate them. And this it is 
which determines the character of our education, (p. 6.) 

As, throughout life, not what we are, but what we shall 
be thought, is the question ; so in education, the question 
is, not the intrinsic value of knowledge, so much as its 
extrinsic effects on others, (p. 7.) 

Before there can be a rational curriculum, we must 
settle which things it most concerns us to know ; or, to 
use a word of Bacon's, now unfortunately obsolete — we 
must determine the relative value of knowledges, (p. 11.) 

The general problem which comprehends every special 
problem is — the right ruling of conduct in all directions 
under all circumstances, (p. 12.) 

And this being the great thing needful for us to learn, 
is, by consequence, the great thing which education has 
to teach. To prepare us for complete living is the func- 
tion which education has to discharge ; and the only 
rational mode of judging of any educational course is, to 
judge in what degree it discharges such function, (p. 12.) 



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98 



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EDUCATION 



That kind of information which, in our schools, usurps 
the name History — the mere tissue of names and dates 
and dead unmeaning events — has a conventional value 
only : it has not the remotest bearing upon any of our 
actions ; and is of use only for the avoidance of those 
unpleasant criticisms which current opinion passes upon 
its absence, (p. 19.) 

Acquirement of every kind has two values — value as 
knowledge and value as discipline, (p. 19.) 

Men who would blush if caught saying Iphigenia 
instead of Iphigenia, or would resent as an insult any 
imputation of ignorance respecting the fabled labours of 
a fabled demi-god, show not the slightest shame in con- 
fessing that they do not know where the Eustachian tubes 
are, what are the actions of the spinal cord, what is the 
normal rate of pulsation, or how the lungs are inflated, 
(p. 26.) 

They are facts from which no conclusions can be drawn 
— nnorganizable facts ; and therefore facts which can be 
of no service in establishing principles of conduct, which 
is the chief use of facts. Read them, if you like, for 
amusement ; but do not flatter yourself they are instruc- 
tive, (p. 54.) 



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99 



That which it really concerns us to know, is the natural 
history of society. We want all facts which help us to 
understand how a nation has grown and organized itself. 
(P. 54-) 

Only in proportion as men obtain a certain rude, empir- 
ical knowledge of human nature, are they enabled to 
understand even the simplest facts of social life : as, for 
instance, the relation between supply and demand, (p. 
57-) 

Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious 
belief that the more a man studies Nature the less he 
reveres it ? Think you that a drop of water, which to the 
vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the 
eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held 
together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would 
produce a flash of lightning? (p. 72.) 

The truth is, that those who have never entered upon 
scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which 
they are surrounded, (p. 72.) 

Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves 
with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phe- 
nomena — care not to understand the architecture of the 
Heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible 
controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots ! 



EDUCATION 



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EDUCATION 



— are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and pass by 
without a glance that grand epic written by the finger of 
God upon the strata of the Earth ! (p. 73.) 

We find that for the criticism and due appreciation of 
works of art, a knowledge of the constitution of things, or 
in other words, a knowledge of science, is requisite. And 
we not only find that science is the handmaid to all forms 
of art and poetry, but that, rightly regarded, science is 
itself poetic, (p. 73.) 

Paraphrasing an Eastern fable, we may say that in the 
family of knowledges, Science is the household drudge, 
who, in obscurity, hides unrecognized perfections, (p. 87.) 

Children should be led to make their own investiga- 
tions, and to draw their own inferences. They should be 
told as little as possible, and induced to discover as much 
as possible, (p. 120.) 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 




VARIOUS FRAGMENTS 

ABILITY VERSUS INFORMATION 

HERE is only one general criticism which I 
feel inclined to make upon the examination 
papers you have forwarded — a criticism to 
which I think they are open in common 
with examination papers at large. They are drawn up 
with the exclusive view of testing acquisition rather than 
power. I hold that the more important thing to be ascer- 
tained by an examination is not the quantity of knowledge 
which a man has taken in and is able to pour out again, 
but the ability he shows to use the knowledge he has 
acquired ; and I think that examinations of all kinds are 
habitually faulty, inasmuch as they use the first test rather 
than the last, by which to judge of superiority, (p. ioo.) 

I hold that in every examination there should be a 
certain set of questions devised for the purpose of ascer- 
taining what capacity for original thinking the candidate 
has — questions to which he will find no answer in the 
books that he has read, but to which answers must be 
elaborated by himself from reflection upon the knowledge 
he has acquired, (p. ioo.) 



VARIOUS 
FRAGMENTS 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



FACTS AND 
COMMENTS 




FACTS AND COMMENTS 

SOME REGRETS 

FTEN when among the Scotch mountains I 
have pleased myself with the thought that 
their sides can never be brought under the 
plough : here at least Nature must ever 
remain unsubdued. Though subordination to human 
wants is sometimes suggested by the faint tinklings of 
distant sheep-bells, or by some deer on the sky-line, yet 
these do not deduct from, but rather add to, the poetry of 
the scene. In such places one may forget for a while the 
prosaic aspects of civilization, (pp. 6, 7.) 

I detest that conception of social progress which 
presents as its aim, increase of population, growth of 
wealth, spread of commerce, (p. 7.) 

We assume that our form of social life under which, 
speaking generally, men toil to-day that they may gain 
the means of toiling to-morrow, is a satisfactory form, and 
profess ourselves anxious to spread it all over the world ; 
while we speak with reprobation of the relatively easy and 
contented lives passed by many of the peoples we call 
uncivilized. But the ideal we cherish is a transitory one 



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— appropriate, perhaps, to a phase of human development 
during which the passing generations are sacrificed in the 
process of making easier the lives of future generations. 
(P- 7-) 

SPONTANEOUS REFORM 

Market towns, large and small, have without forethought 
become places of periodic exchanges ; while exchanges of 
higher and larger kinds have established themselves in 
London, where, from hour to hour, you may feel the pulse 
of the world. So, too, by spontaneous co-operation has 
grown up that immense mercantile marine, sailing and 
steaming, which takes men everywhere and brings goods 
from all places. And no less are we indebted to the 
united doings of private individuals for that network of 
submarine telegraphs by which there is now established 
something like a universal consciousness. All these things 
are non-governmental. If we ask how arose the science 
which guided the development of them, we find its origin 
to have been non-governmental, (p. 32.) 

This vast social organization, the life of which we sever- 
ally aid and which makes our lives possible by satisfying 
our wants, is just as much a naturally-developed product 
as is the language by which the wants are communicated. 
(P- 33-) 



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FACTS AND 
COMMENTS 



FEELING VERSUS INTELLECT 

There has grown up universally an identification of 
mind with intelligence. Partly because the guidance of 
our actions by thought is so conspicuous, and partly 
because speech, which occupies so large a space in our 
lives, is a vehicle that makes thought predominant to our- 
selves and others, we are led to suppose that the thought- 
element of mind is its chief element: an element often 
excluding from recognition every other. Consequently, 
when it is said that the brain is the organ of the mind, it 
is assumed that the brain is chiefly if not wholly the organ 
of the intellect, (pp. 35, $6.) 

The error is an enormous one. The chief component 
of mind is feeling, (p. 36.) 

So that the body even of our thought-consciousness 
consists of feelings, and only the form constitutes what we 
distinguish as intelligence : there is no intelligence in a 
sensation of red, or of sweetness, or of hardness, or of 
effort, but only in certain co-ordinations of such sensa- 
tions, (p. 37.) 

And then comes the other great class of feelings, 
ignored in the current conception of mind — the emotions. 
(P. 37-) 






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= °5 



And this mental element which thus upon occasion 
shows itself supreme, is in a sense supreme at all times ; 
for the prevailing emotions, higher or lower, are those 
components of mind which determine the daily conduct, 
now dutiful now lax, now noble now base. That part 
which we ordinarily ignore when speaking of mind is its 
essential part. The emotions are the masters, the intellect 
is the servant. The guidance of our acts through percep- 
tion and reason has for its end the satisfaction of feelings, 
which at once prompt the acts and yield the energy for 
performance of the acts ; for all the exertions daily gone 
through, whether accompanied by agreeable or disagreeable 
feelings, are gone through that certain other feelings may 
be obtained or avoided, (pp. $&, 39.) 

So long as it will hold together, a society wicked in the 
extreme may be formed of men who in keenness of intel- 
lect rank with Mephistopheles ; and, conversely, though 
its members are stupid and unprogressive, a society may 
be full of happiness if its members are scrupulously 
regardful of one another's claims, and actively sympathetic. 
This proposition, though almost a truism, is little regarded. 
Full recognition of its truth would make men honour, 
much more than they do, the unobtrusively good, and 
think less of those whose merit is intellectual ability. 
There would, for example, be none of the unceasing 
admiration for that transcendent criminal, Napoleon. 



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An over-valuation of teaching is necessarily a concomi- 
tant of this erroneous interpretation of mind. Everywhere 
the cry is — Educate, educate, educate ! Everywhere the 
belief is that by such culture as schools furnish, children, 
and therefore adults, can be moulded into the desired 
shapes. It is assumed that when men are taught what is 
right, they will do what is right — that a proposition intel- 
lectually accepted will be morally operative. And yet 
this conviction, contradicted by every-day experience, is 
at variance with an every-day axiom — the axiom that 
each faculty is strengthened by exercise of it — intellectual 
power by intellectual action, and moral power by moral 
action, (pp. 41, 42.) 

It is true that where the feeling is already active, or the 
capacity for it exists, some effect may result ; but where 
the feeling is dormant or congenitally deficient, the in- 
junction practically does nothing : unless, indeed, it excites 
repugnance, as sometimes happens. It seems, however, 
that this unlimited faith in teaching is not to be changed 
by facts. Though in presence of multitudinous schools, 
high and low, we have the rowdies and Hooligans, the 
savage disturbers of meetings, the adulterators of food, 
the givers of bribes and receivers of corrupt commissions, 
the fraudulent solicitors, the bubble companies, yet the 
current belief continues un weakened, (p. 42.) 



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107 



As implied above, this undue faith in teaching is mainly 
caused by the erroneous conception of mind. Were it 
fully understood that the emotions are the masters and 
the intellect the servant, it would be seen that little can 
be done by improving the servant while the masters 
remain unimproved. Improving the servant does but 
give the masters more power of achieving their ends. 
(P. 43-) 

ESTIMATES OF MEN 

Speaking broadly, we may say that the world is always 
wrong, more or less, in its judgments of men — errs by 
excess or defect. Judgments are determined less by 
intellectual processes than by feelings ; and feelings are 
swayed this way or that way largely by mere personal 
likes and dislikes, or by the desire to express authorized 
opinions — to be in the fashion, (p. 79.) 

After going to one extreme a reaction in course of time 
carries it to the other extreme, and then comes eventu- 
ally a re-reaction. This is clearly observable in the case 
of reputations. Time was when the authority of Aris- 
totle was supreme and unquestioned. Then came Bacon 
and the reform in philosophy which he initiated : the 
result being that the reputation of Aristotle waned and 
the reputation of Bacon became great, (p. 79.) 



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This rhythm is conspicuously illustrated in the case of 
Shakespeare, who, highly appreciated by contemporaries 
(as witness Ben Jonson's lines), fell afterwards into 
neglect, and then, during the present century, has been 
continually rising, until now his position is so high that 
criticism is practically paralyzed and societies occupy 
themselves with the minutiae of his sentences, (p. 80.) 

The judgment of his devoted admirer Ben Jonson, 
who, when told that Shakespeare never blotted out a 
line, remarked that he would have done better to blot a 
thousand, is probably nearer the mark than the judgment 
now current, which implies the belief that everything he 
wrote is good. (p. 80.) 

Apart from particular instances, however, the conclu- 
sion is that we ought constantly to find what are the 
needful modifications of current opinions — not opinions 
about men only but opinions about other things — by 
contemplating in each case the rhythm, and trying to see 
whereabouts in it we are : feeling sure that the opinion 
which prevails is never quite right, and that only after 
numerous actions and reactions may it settle into the 
rational mean. (p. 81.) 

STATE-EDUCATION 

We may with certainty say that intellectual culture 
increases the power which the emotions have of mani- 



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109 



festing themselves and obtaining their satisfactions — 
intensifies the emotional life. Were the higher emotions 
stronger than the lower, this would be an advantage ; or 
were the two balanced it would not be a disadvantage ; 
but, unquestionably, in average human beings the lower 
emotions are more powerful than the higher : witness the 
results arising from any sudden removal of all social 
restraints. Hence, education, adding to the force of all 
the emotions, increases the relative predominance of the 
lower, and the restraints which the higher impose are 
more apt to be broken through, (pp. 90, 91.) 

What has been said above does not imply that the 
working classes shall be kept in ignorance, but merely 
that enlightenment shall spread among them after the 
same manner that it has spread among the upper and 
middle classes : being privately aided so far as philan- 
thropic feelings prompt ; for such feelings and their 
results are parts of the normal educational agency, oper- 
ative alike on giver and receiver, (pp. 91, 92.) 

If supply and demand are allowed free play in the 
intellectual sphere as in the economic sphere, and no 
hindrance is put in the way of the naturally superior, 
education must have an effect widely different from that 
described — must conduce to social stability as well as to 
other benefits. For if those of the lower ranks are left 



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to get culture for their children as best they may, just as 
they are left to get food and clothing for them, it must 
follow that the children of the superior will be advan- 
taged : the thrifty parents, the energetic, and those with a 
high sense of responsibility, will buy education for their 
children to a greater extent than will the improvident and 
the idle. And if character is inherited, then the average 
result must be that the children of the superior will pros- 
per and increase more than the children of the inferior. 
There will be a multiplication of the fittest instead of a 
multiplication of the unflttest. (pp. 92, 93.) 

ULTIMATE QUESTIONS 

Old people must have many reflections in common. 
Doubtless one which I have now in mind is very familiar. 
For years past, when watching the unfolding buds in the 
Spring there has arisen the thought — Shall I ever again 
see the buds unfold ? Shall I ever again be awakened at 
dawn by the song of the thrush ? Now that the end is 
not likely to be long postponed, there results an increasing 
tendency to meditate upon ultimate questions, (p. 300.) 

It is commonly supposed that those who have relin- 
quished the creed of Christendom occupy themselves 
exclusively with material interests and material activities 
— thinking nothing of the How and the Why, of the 
Whence and the Whither. It may be so with some of 



PASSAGES FROM HERBERT SPENCER 



the uncultured, but it is certainly not so with many of the 
cultured. In the minds of those intimately known to me, 
the "riddle of existence" fills spaces far larger than the 
current conception fills in the minds of men in general. 
After studying primitive beliefs, and finding that there 
is no origin for the idea of an after-life save the conclusion 
which the savage draws from the notion suggested by 
dreams, of a wandering double which comes back on 
awaking and which goes away for an indefinite time at 
death ; and after contemplating the inscrutable relation 
between brain and consciousness, and finding that we can 
get no evidence of the existence of the last without the 
activity of the first, we seem obliged to relinquish the 
thought that consciousness continues after physical organi- 
zation has become inactive, (pp. 300, 301.) 

But it seems a strange and repugnant conclusion that 
with the cessation of consciousness at death, there ceases 
to be any knowledge of having existed. With his last 
breath it becomes to each the same thing as though he 
had never lived, (p. 301.) 

And then the consciousness itself — what is it during 
the time that it continues ? And what becomes of it 
when it ends ? We can only infer that it is a specialized 
and individualized form of that Infinite and Eternal 
Energy which transcends both our knowledge and our 



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and that at death its elements lapse into 
the Infinite and Eternal Energy whence they were derived. 

There is one aspect of the Great Enigma to which little 
attention seems given, but which has of late years more 
frequently impressed me. I refer not to the problems 
which all concrete existences, from suns down to microbes, 
present, but to those presented by the universal form under 
which these exist — the phenomena of Space, (pp. 301, 
302.) 

In youth we pass by without surprise the geometrical 
truths set down in our Euclids. It suffices to learn that 
in a right-angled triangle the square of the hypothenuse is 
equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides : it 
is demonstrable, and that is enough. Concerning the 
multitudes of remarkable relations among lines and 
among spaces very few ever ask — Why are they so ? 
Perhaps the question may in later years be raised, as it 
has been in myself, by some of the more conspicuously 
marvellous truths now grouped under the title of " the 
Geometry of Position." Many of these are so astounding 
that but for the presence of ocular proof they would be 
incredible ; and by their marvellousness, as well as by 
their beauty, they serve, in some minds at least, to raise 
the unanswerable question — How come there to exist 
among the parts of this seemingly-structureless vacancy 
we call Space, these strange relations? How does it 



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"3 



happen that the blank form of things presents us with 
truths as incomprehensible as do the things it contains ? 
Beyond the reach of our intelligence as are the mysteries 
of the objects known by our senses, those presented in 
this universal matrix are, if we may so say, still further 
beyond the reach of our intelligence ; for whereas those of 
the one kind may be, and are, thought of by many as expli- 
cable on the hypothesis of Creation, and by the rest on the 
hypothesis of Evolution, those of the other kind cannot by 
either be regarded as thus explicable. Theist and Ag- 
nostic must agree in recognizing the properties of Space 
as inherent, eternal, uncreated — as anteceding all crea- 
tion, if creation has taken place, and all evolution, if evo- 
lution has taken place, (pp. 302, 303.) 



Hence, could we penetrate the mysteries of existence, 
there would remain still more transcendent mysteries. 
That which can be thought of neither as made nor evolved 
presents us with facts the origin of which is even more 
remote from conceivability than is the origin of the facts 
presented by visible and tangible things. It is impossible 
to imagine how there came to exist the marvellous space- 
relations referred to above. We are obliged to recognize 
these as having belonged to Space from all eternity. 
(PP- 3°3> 304.) 



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And then comes the thought of this universal matrix 
itself, anteceding alike creation or evolution, whichever be 
assumed, and infinitely transcending both, alike in extent 
and duration ; since both, if conceived at all, must be con- 
ceived as having had beginnings, while Space had no 
beginning. The thought of this blank form of existence 
which, explored in all directions as far as imagination can 
reach, has, beyond that, an unexplored region compared 
with which the part which imagination has traversed is but 
infinitesimal — the thought of a Space compared with 
which our immeasurable sidereal system dwindles to a 
point, is a thought too overwhelming to be dwelt upon. 
Of late years the consciousness that without origin or 
cause infinite Space has ever existed and must ever exist, 
produces in me a feeling from which I shrink, (p. 304.) 

















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